Civil-Public-Private-Partnership (CP3)

Agricultural landscapes are predominant across Europe and deliver a multitude of ecosystem services (ES) essential to sustain biodiversity and human life on earth. As of yet, there is still a mismatch between the spatial and temporal levels that are relevant for effective ES provision, including agricultural food production and biodiversity protection and the ones of established governance structures that are meant to safeguard these ES. Current governance approaches mostly include command and control type arrangements valid for different administrative units in the EU (e.g. Natura 2000 network, Water Framework Directive). This is supplemented by incentive and market based approaches for individual farmers, such as agri-environmental schemes as part of the CAP. However, these approaches are often ineffective because they are too short-term, scattered across the landscape and not well matched to the spatial and temporal processes corresponding to flows of ecosystem benefits between ES providers and beneficiaries. The proposed project will investigate governance models that go beyond command and control or market-based approaches. The focus will be on collaborative governance approaches involving partnerships between actors from all spheres of society, including state, market and civil society. Innovative governance models will include partnerships, where local stakeholders participate in the design of the models, social entrepreneurs or technological innovators from the market sector are involved, or citizens take on the role of monitors as lay experts through honorary work. The objectives of the proposed research are to (1) identify, describe, and analyze such collaborative governance models that are successful in providing an institutional fit between the level of governance and the required spatial and temporal scales necessary to reach specific ES, food production and biodiversity targets; (2) identify, describe and analyze agricultural production practices linked to the different governance models and explore their relations to ES, food production and biodiversity targets, including existing trade-offs and synergies; (3) develop an inventory of ES provided by and needed to sustain agro-ecosystems, including spatial and temporal scales of delivery, and ES flows; and (4) derive recommendations for stakeholders, i.e. policy makers, market actors, civil society initiatives, farming community, how development of such collaborative governance models can be supported by specific policies and administrative conduct. The methodological approach is based on inter- and trans-disciplinary research involving natural and social scientists cooperating closely with stakeholders from practice and the policy domain who are involved in the development of the collaborative governance models. The project will examine and compare three selected case studies representing different governance models in agro-ecosystem management for effective ES provision, agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. The involvement of IDC and Dr. Angela Meyer as researcher in charge will primarily focus on analyzing to what extend the collaborative governance models identified in the case studies are suited to provide an institutional fit between the spatial and temporal scales necessary to reach specific ES and biodiversity targets. The selection of case studies includes both, successful and already approved governance models, but also mismatched governance models still in the process of adaptation and improvement. Furthermore, the selected case studies exemplify different combination in regard to the following aspects: protection status for biodiversity conservation (e.g. national park, nature park, national landscape, biosphere reserve, etc.), agro-ecosystem management type and intensity (arable, grassland, wine, fruit production under extensive vs. intensive management), and, linked to this, different sets of ES they provide and are dependent upon. IDC leads WP2 (Governance models), which is based on extensive literature review, assessment activities and field research with particular emphasis on the case study in Austria, the Naturpark Jauerling-Wachau. Additional focus will be set on the role played by civil society organisations (CSO). The production of participatory movies in one or two of the case studies will be used as a way to capture and visualize the local stakeholders perspectives. The main hypotheses to be investigated are (1) that there are collaborative approaches in governance that help in providing an institutional fit between agro-ecosystem management and the required spatial and temporal scales necessary to reach specific ES, food production and biodiversity targets in rural landscapes; and (2) that from such collaborative approaches valuable lessons can be learned to inform stakeholders in governance and policy and in the civil society who are confronted with similar challenges.

The cp project conducted research on collaborative governance arrangements as innovative approaches in policy to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. Collaborative governance approaches are understood as partnerships of actors from the civil, public and private sphere of society. The main objective of cp was to analyze the potential of such approaches to mitigate institutional misfit in agricultural landscape management. Institutional misfit occurs when governance approaches are not well-aligned to the spatial, temporal, and functional requirements of the ecosystem services they are meant to govern. Typically, three types of misfit are differentiated: Spatial misfit occurs when existing governance approaches do not cover the necessary spatial scale to effectively manage a certain ecosystem services. Temporal misfit occurs when approaches are too inflexible over time or too short-term. Functional misfit occurs when existing approaches work against each other causing ecosystem services trade-offs, or if there is a total absence of governance for a specific ecosystem services. To investigate the potential of collaborative approaches to provide an institutional fit between governance and the spatial and temporal realities and requirements in cultural landscapes, the analysis was based on empirical research in three European protection areas: the Biosphere reserve Spreewald, Germany, the Nature park Jauerling-Wachau, Austria, and the Berg en Dal region as part of the National Landscape Gelderse Poort, the Netherlands. Within this wider research scope, the Austrian sub-project has focused on the identification, description and detailed analysis of existing collaborative governance models in these three case studies. Results of this analysis show that collaborative governance approaches may be complementary to top-down or market based governance models where these are too inflexible and general. Their strength especially lies in being better positioned to suggest responses that emphasize local spatial and temporal particularities at the landscape level. However, whereas they can highlight and point out institutional misfit of conventional governance approaches and promote more locally adapted and owned solutions, it would be illusive to expect that they can take the place of laws and regulations and the mechanisms to ensure compliance, e.g. with environmental oversight.