Aarhus University Seal

Are policies regarding the environment, climate and agriculture in harmony with each other?

In a project led by Aarhus University scientists will investigate if policies regarding the environment, climate and agriculture in the Baltic Sea region are in tune or at odds with each other.

[Translate to English:] Harmonerer lovgivningen vedrørende Østersøens havmiljø og det omkringliggende landbrug med hinanden? Det undersøger forskere fra Aarhus Universitet i et EU-projekt. Foto: Colourbox

Economically efficient protection of the aquatic ecosystems in the Baltic Sea while ensuring a healthy and competitive agricultural sector in the region can be a challenge, as the interests of agriculture and the environment can be at odds with each other. The question is how policies, rules and regulations that contribute to protecting the environment can be designed so that both agriculture and the environment come out on top.

 

A new EU project led by Senior Scientist Berit Hasler from the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University aims at finding solutions to this dilemma. The aim of the project is to identify how policies affect transport of nutrients to the sea and emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and whether the policies give rise to conflict or synergy. The results from the project will provide important information upon which future policies that aim at improving agriculture and the environment in an economically efficient manner can be based

 

Ocean, climate and agriculture are connected

The quality of the aquatic ecosystem in the Baltic Sea is affected by many factors, including climate change and the amount of nutrients that find their way into the water. Eutrophication, which is an ecosystem’s response to an oversupply of nutrients, is a major environmental problem in the Baltic Sea. Agriculture plays an important role in this respect.

 

Greenhouse gas emissions are influenced by agriculture and environmental policy actions. Some actions that reduce nutrients also reduce greenhouse gases but others have the opposite effect. In order to ensure that efforts to reduce eutrophication in the Baltic Sea are successful it is important to create cohesion between agricultural and climate policies so they do not pull in opposite directions but instead create synergy.

 

Finding the right solutions

Efforts are being made in the countries in the Baltic Sea region to curtail the amount of nutrients in the aquatic environment. Rules and regulations to protect the aquatic environment have been adopted in the countries in the Baltic Sea region, but how economically effective are they and how do farmers react to these? Answers to these questions can make it possible to provide policy advice that can increase cost efficiency and reduce conflicts among stakeholders. 

 

The EU project Go4Baltic will gather knowledge of agricultural and environmental policy measures with relation to the Baltic Sea aquatic environment. There will be a particular focus on the relations and barriers that may be involved. With this knowledge in hand, the scientists can provide policy-relevant advice and recommendations for reducing eutrophication in the Baltic Sea with coherence between agricultural structural policies, policies regarding the aquatic environment, and climate mitigation policies.

 

The scientists will investigate how farmers react to nutrient and climate policies and, in particular, to different actual and potential subsidy schemes. They will analyze how farmers perceive and react to present regulations, whether the farmers feel that these regulations and policies conflict or are coherent with each other, and how farmers react and adjust to different policy instrument mixes.

 

This will be done by conducting comprehensive surveys in Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Estonia. In each of these countries a representative number of farmers (approximately 1000) will be questioned. Do present policies have the desired effects? How do farmers react to them? Do the policies motivate the agricultural sector to develop new technologies that can reduce nutrient loss? These are some of the questions that the project Go4Baltic seeks to answer. 

 

- In contrast to former studies of nutrient handling and measures to reduce nutrient losses from agriculture, we will retrieve information from farmers on their decisions and trade-offs between agricultural production and environmental protection. We will pay attention to their choices of subsidy schemes and how the farmers respond to other policy instruments, explains Senior Scientist and leader of the project Berit Hasler from the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University.

 

Specific focus will be put on incentives for technological development of fertilizer and manure use and handling. To this end, the scientists will lay the ground by asking the farmers how they handle their fertilizer and manure. The questionnaire will include questions about amounts used, when it is spread and how it is spread.

 

- We anticipate that the analysis of these problems in Go4Baltic will produce relevant results and recommendations for the implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan, the EU Water Framework directive and the Marine Strategy Framework directive that are implemented in the member states. We also anticipate that the results will be useful for recommendations on future adjustments of agricultural and climate policies, says Berit Hasler.

 

The project is led by Aarhus University. The other partners in the project are the Natural Resource Institute (LUKE) and the University of Helsinki in Finland, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Warsaw in Poland, and Stockholm Environmental Institute – Tallinn (SEIT) in Estonia.

 

Go4Baltic (Coherent policies and governance of the Baltic Sea Ecosystems) has received 1.97 million euros from the BONUS programme.

 

The project is a BONUS project. BONUS is a joint Baltic Sea research and development programme that is funded jointly by the national research funding institutions in the eight EU member states around the Baltic Sea, and the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration. Read more about BONUS here.

 

For more information please contact: Head of Section, Senior Scientist Berit Hasler, Department of Environmental Science, e-mail: bh@envs.au.dk, telephone: 8715 8637, mobile: 2217 2274