Assessing the responsiveness of farmer´s grassland management practices (REGARDS)

Objective: To identify factors that enable or constrain the ability of farmers to adapt their grassland management practices to socio-economic and climatic changes. Different levels of governance from local to supranational may provide inconsistent incentives and/or restrict farmer`s ability to adapt their management practice so as to avoid tipping-points. Economic, societal or technological incentives and constraints also influence the socio-ecological resilience of farms and ultimately affect biodiversity. Farmers need to be responsive to feedback i.e. recognise that a system is approaching a tipping point, choose an adequate adaptation of their management practices, and be able to implement them with minimum delay. Their ability to respond adequately may be impaired or enhanced by prevailing governance systems, societal norms, economic incentives, or technological considerations. Factors that impair or contribute to adaptability will be assessed in the Stubai Valley (Austria), in Lautaret (France) and in Oppdal (Norway). Two implementations of the common EU governance framework, and one example from a non-EU country will allow to better understand how effective feedback mechanisms are structured, what levers ensure a `space for manoeuver`, and which decision- making structures in governance minimize delays in implementation. Cross-scale linkages and interactions between groups influencing decisions taken at farm scale will be focal points of investigation. The outcomes will be recommendations on how to enhance adaptive and reflexive forms of governance The project is divided into 3 tasks: Task 1: Survey the existing scientific literature on the role of governance (e.g. support programs, legal restrictions, rules-in-use, values and norms) to enable farmers to protect biodiversity, as relevant for the three case study sites. This will yield information on the institutional barriers to adaptability and reflexivity, i.e. sources of lock-in at farm level. Task 2: Assess a broad range of factors including governance systems and technological choices that affect grassland management practices and thus biodiversity, at the three sites. This assessment will cover the interactions between societal, technological and economic incentives, as they emerge from different sectors (e.g. agriculture, tourism, nature conservation). The goal is to understand how a broad range of factors affect the `room for manoeuvre` of farmers in the three project sites. The data collected through key informant interviews will allow a preliminary assessment of the relative strength of feedback dynamics between these different system components, as well as their direct effects on grassland management and biodiversity. Task 3: Consult experts through a three-round Delphi inquiry. The focus will be on the impact of various incentives and constraints as identified in task 2 on farm-level decisions that affect biodiversity. The inquiry will cover expert assessment on changes of farm management practices resulting in tipping points regarding biodiversity, the influence of factors like programs, regulations and technology changes on these tipping points, possible indicators to be monitored regularly in order to enhance an adaptation of programs and regulations and measures for faster response. The assessment will involve open questions, as well as rating and ranking scales becoming more specific with each round. This will allow integrating preliminary results from ecosystem dynamics and tipping points, from landscape scale dynamics of ecosystem services, as well as preliminary indicators on changes of material flows, which will be explored in other parts of the overall project. In each consecutive round experts will be provided with the results of the previous round, asked for comments, and given the opportunity to revise their assessment. The results of each consultation will be analysed on country level, across the three countries as well as different expert categories. The improved understanding of factors influencing grassland management practices will help to refine scenarios developed within the overall project and ultimately generate recommendations to improve their adaptability and timely response.

REGARDS aimed to unravel the mechanisms underpinning resilience of marginal European grassland systems to environmental and social changes in order to enhance socio-ecological resilience from farm to regional level. We conducted research in the Central French Alps (Lautaret, Hautes-Alpes) In Norway (Oppdal) in Austrian Tirol (Stubai Valley). The soci-economic research focused on the farming system and the current pressures it is subjected to and deducted the effects of social, economic and climate changes on the farming practices. In addition to that we implemented a three round Delphi survey in the three participating countries and on EU-level to assess the experts opinions on general trends of farming, as well as on their assessment of support systems and possible future changes. In general measures refer to incentives and support for keeping the landscape open, regional marketing of products or cooperation with tourism, but also restrictions to safeguard clean water or protection against natural hazards. While incentives should support favored behavior, restrictions should prevent unwanted practices. The measures should be more target oriented and include less rigid prescriptions. Farmers should be given more flexibility how to achieve a desired result. More flexibility in the implementation should enable farmers furthermore to react faster on changing climatic conditions. The experts recommend further to define the goals in a participative process including various stakeholder groups to serve the different societal interests better. Especially farmers should be more included in the design of measures.