CASPER
(Cost-effectiveness of Agri-environmental Schemes for biodiversity Protection and Ecosystem service Restoration)

The conservation of many European endangered species depends on agricultural land use (Gerowitt et al. 2003). Biodiversity-enhancing agricultural land use is, however, often costly to farmers. To provide farmers with an incentive to carry out such land use agri-environment schemes have been developed to compensate farmers for their costs (IEEP 2008). When implementing such compensation schemes a key question is how to design them in a way that they are effective (i.e. the conservation goals are achieved) and cost-effective (the available money is spend in a way that the outcome in terms of conservation is maximised) (Wätzold and Schwerdtner 2005).

The purpose of this projectl is to respond to the tender request “Cost-effectiveness of Agri-environment Schemes for biodiversity Protection and Ecosystem service Restoration (CASPER)” by offering to provide a software tool based on an ecological-economic modelling procedure for decision support to optimise agri-environment policies in Flanders with respect to bird conservation.