Public Goods
The report
The main policy paper on ‘Public Goods from Private Land’, carried out by a RISE Task Force led by Professor Allan Buckwell, was completed in December 2009. The study focused on the nature and scale of public goods and services which land managers (farmers and foresters) currently provide. Using the available evidence on the range of environmental and man-made landscape services which multi-functional land management can offer, the report presents a series of mechanisms which could be used to deliver services not provided for by the market. The report is available in English, Italian and French in the publications section.
The RISE Task Force report report was instrumental in launching discussions on the subject in the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) as well as in several European Parliament Committees. RISE organised several workshops with EU Institutions in order to publicise the report and push for the adoption of key messages in the next CAP reform (2014-2020). RISE CEO Corrado Pirzio-Biroli has been involved in further advisory work for the EP regarding the forthcoming CAP reform via contacts with the key rapporteurs, official testimonies and informal drafting of amendments to the Commission reform proposals.
In July 2011, RISE published a study for the European Parliament, advising on the tools for the European Agricultural Policy to encourage the provision of public goods. The study was a joint publication together with the IEEP, the vTI and the INEA. The study aims to provide evidence for the undersupply of environmental and social public goods associated with agriculture, and to suggest concrete policies to bridge the gaps in provision mainly through the CAP but also through other flanking measure.
You can find the report on our publications page.
Other
RISE has also supported the efforts of the UK based Environment Bank ltd, to develop supportive policy instruments to facilitate offsetting and habitat banking schemes which aim to ensure that damage to the environment through new developments is compensated through equivalent restoration projects which are financed through a system of buying and selling credits.
Environment Bank Ltd recently launched an online Conservation credits Exchange which enables conservation groups, farmers and landowners to register their wildlife sites so as to provide ‘conservation credits’; these credits will then be available to developers for purchase to offset their impacts on biodiversity – putting a transferable value on biodiversity loss and establishing private sector funding for the long-term management of conservation sites. Other useful documents relating to the financing of public goods produced on private farmland: