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Abstract:
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"The EU debate on the future orientation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is increasingly shaped by the role of agriculture in providing agri-environmental public goods, and there is a broad consensus that this approach will be particularly relevant in legitimating the EU policy intervention in the future. Nevertheless, in the EU institutional and academic debate, it is not clear to what extent collective action could be taken into consideration as a valuable alternative to market or state regulation in order to increase the environmental performance of agriculture. Similarly, it is not evident to what extent it is possible to design and implement agricultural policies that incorporate a collective approach for the provision of agri-environmental public goods. This paper aims at addressing these issues by analysing two initiatives recently developed in Central Italy, which shed the light on the benefits and limitations of collective action for the provision of agri-environmental public goods and, above all, illustrate to what extent a collective approach to agri-environmental action could be better embedded and institutionalised in the current EU political settings. The paper shows that public goods provision through agriculture is a very complex task which encompasses several dimensions, such as the bio-physical, socio-economical and socio-political dimensions. The case studies show that an effective provision of agri-environmental public goods relies heavily on the local knowledge of stakeholders and on the capacity of local institutions of influencing farmers behaviours and attitudes. From a policy development perspective, this implies the need of exploring innovative forms of intervention, such as stimulating the co-production of knowledge (amongst farmers, institutions, technicians, and citizens) and the co-management of agri-environmental measures. These arrangements allow taking more into consideration the collective dimension of public good provision and result in more viable and effective solutions, better tailored to the local situations."
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