Making the transition to sustainable agriculture: Articulation of regulation and incentives at landscape scale
For rural producers to adopt more sustainable practices the right incentives (economic, regulatory or a mix thereof) can help reach a new equilibrium with restored and productive landscapes, producing higher environmental benefits, on farm and beyond, with lower opportunity costs to rural producers; responding to CBD Decision XIII/3:32.
To be effective, better coordination and long-term programmes of these existing incentives into inclusive, integrated packages are needed to maximize the adoption of sustainable practices. Policies must be aligned, and institutions need to know each other well enough to cooperate, delegate and engage more, also with the private sector.
Based on their experience, five panelists discussed how better articulation of regulation and incentives can be achieved, including:
- What are successful institutional coordination strategies across the agricultural sectors - and between agricultural sectors and the biodiversity/environment agencies?
- How effective have they been to incentivize more sustainable agricultural processes?
- Considering the interest for performance-based approaches (e.g. PES, REDD+), can programs assisting rural producers in improving productivity and income be made conditional on the adoption on environmental safeguards?
- What are the examples of this?
- How effective have these been?
- To which extent can certification schemes support a systemic transition to more sustainable value chains?
Moderator: Sheila Wertz-Kanounnikoff (Senior Forestry Officer, FAO)
Panellists:
- Sheila Wertz-Kanounnikoff (Senior Forestry Officer, FAO)
- Jasmin Hundorf (Project Coordinator - Mainstreaming of Biodiversity within the Mexican Agricultural Sector, GIZ-Mexico)
- Ann-Kathrin Neureuther (Project Manager -Community-led solutions that work for agriculture and nature, Rare)
- Philip Dobie (Senior Fellow, World Agroforestry Centre -ICRAF)
Panel discussion
Discussions during this panel session focused on the interface between economic incentive structures and regulation to scale up biodiversity mainstreaming in agriculture. It was noted that farmers often lacked market incentives, together with tenure, to enable their investment in trees for both conservation and income generation. Rare noted that a multidimensional approach, using social and economic incentives can be used to promote and scale up sustainable alternatives.
Gaps in the use of incentives were noted within the EU Agricultural policy, including incoherent incentive systems, missing social capital and platforms for adaptive learning, and a transparent decision process.
The importance of the Cancun Declaration on Mainstreaming Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity for Well-being was noted as a formal platform for discussions on agriculture and biodiversity.
Elements the panel would like to have included in the post 2020 framework were noted as:
- The importance of gender disaggregated data to understand what incentives work for men and women farmers.
- The importance to address behaviour to achieve transformative change
- The need to develop better indicators to monitor the mainstreaming agenda for reporting on Aichi Target 7
- The need to clarify what is meant by perverse incentives and unsustainable production.