SHOWCASING SYNERGIES BETWEEN AGRICULTURE, BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES TO HELP FARMERS CAPITALISING ON NATIVE BIODIVERSITY

Biodiversity plays a pivotal role in maintaining productive farming systems through the pollination, pest regulation and soil services it provides. Ironically, practices aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity can often degrade biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Furthermore, the current economic paradigm results in the abandonment of agriculturally marginal areas where extensive farming practices still maintain high biodiversity levels. As a consequence, farmland biodiversity is experiencing steep declines throughout Europe and society at large is increasingly concerned about the loss of public goods, such as iconic plant species and wildlife as well as the cultural landscapes as a whole. Sustainable restoration of farmland biodiversity necessitates an internalization of biodiversity in farming enterprises. This requires a better understanding of factors that influence farmers’ decisions to manage for biodiversity, and a better understanding of the relationship between farm management and native biodiversity along with associated ecosystem service benefits and potential impairments. To bring about change, knowledge that is co-created with farmers and other stakeholders on how biodiversity can efficiently be integrated into a variety of farming systems, under local conditions, needs to be robust and exchanged in an easily accessible manner. The overall objective of SHOWCASE is to help make biodiversity a more integral part of European farming by identifying effective incentives to invest in biodiversity, providing the evidence that these incentives result in biodiversity increases and biodiversity-based benefits and communicating both the principles and best practices to as wide a range of stakeholders as possible.