International result based payments network

Agri-environmental payments in Europe have until now mainly been measure-oriented. A more modern, alternative model for the agri-environmental policy measures are result based payments (RBP). In result based schemes, the farmers are remunerated based on the achievement of specific biodiversity results (in contrast to management based schemes where the farmer is contracted to undertake specific actions).

Result based payment schemes are increasingly being used as a means of encouraging land managers to change their management practices to protect natural habitats and species. In Europe the number of these schemes has been steadily growing in the past decades. The result has been a diverse range of different payment models which have now been tested and implemented across the continent, but, as yet, no organisational structure to tie them together.

With a network of actors involved in the implementation of RBP experiences and challenges can be shared and catalysed across countries. Researchers, policy makers and farmers are linked to vitalize academic work and policy design as well as to increase the ownership of farmers for biodiversity and climate measures.

At the start of the result based payment network, an international conference was organized and held from 16 to 17 September 2019 in Vienna, by Suske Consulting, the association thema:natur and Jordbruks verket – Swedish Board of Agriculture. The event was hosted by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism. More than 50 participants from 17 countries accepted the invitation. The aim of this event was to create a user network in which managers of result based measures (and those who want to create such measures) can come together and exchange experiences on a regular basis. To facilitate this, the meeting briefly presented the various existing result based support measures from Europe. This was followed by an open discussion in which the transferability of the result based approach to other ecosystem services (water, soil and climate) was discussed. Finally, further steps how to build a network for result based payments were discussed. On the second day an excursion to two farmers in Lower Austria and Styria, who implement result based nature conservation measures, took place.

In the course of this meeting the idea of a website was born, which should additionally promote the international exchange of the network. It is online since April 20th 2020 and is maintained by Suske Consulting.

Wolfgang Suske is part of the RBP network board together with Nika Debeljak (Senior Consultant at the Slovenian Institute for Nature Conservation), Knut Per Hasund (Senior Economist at the Swedish Agricultural Office), James Moran (ecologist and biologist at the Irish Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology) and Gerald Schwarz (researcher at the German Thünen Institute for Agricultural Economics), who is responsible for planning and conducting further activities of the network.