Biodiversity conservation is firmly embedded in EU legislation and regulatory frameworks. There is increasing recognition of the pivotal role biodiversity plays in maintaining productive farming systems through the pollination, natural pest regulation and soil services it provides. Yet, practices aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity often adversely affect native and domestic biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Farmland biodiversity is steeply declining in most regions of Europe, and society at large is increasingly concerned about the loss of public goods, such as iconic wildlife and cultural landscapes. The evidence base underlying effective biodiversity conservation on farmland has steadily strengthened, with studies demonstrating that management can increase biodiversity and enhance the delivery of a range of regulating and supporting ecosystem services. However, this has not yet resulted in adoption of biodiversity management by the farming sector at a scale sufficient for significant biodiversity benefits. SHOWCASE aims “to make biodiversity an integral part of European farming by identifying effective incentives to invest in biodiversity in diverse socio-ecological contexts, providing the evidence that these incentives result in biodiversity increases and biodiversity-based, socio-economic benefits, and communicating both the principles and best practices to as wide a range of stakeholders as possible.”
Our specific objectives are:
• To establish a long-lasting European multi-actor network of Experimental Biodiversity Areas (EBAs) for the development, testing and showcasing, together with farmers, of approaches to effectively integrate biodiversity into farm management across different European landscapes.
• To identify, along a broad gradient of land use from intensification to abandonment, which economic, agro-ecological and social factors incentivise farmers to actively support biodiversity on their farms.
• To establish, with farmers, a strong evidence base on public and private goods, as well as costs, associated with promoting native biodiversity, in a range of European farming systems and socio-economic contexts.
• To co-develop with stakeholders, methods, tools and indicators to monitor and evaluate biodiversity and ecosystem services against operational biodiversity targets at appropriate temporal and spatial scales and governance levels, and establish harmonized sets of data on native biodiversity.
• To develop and implement inspirational narratives to communicate the benefits of biodiversity to farmers, and beyond, and to make available easily accessible information on best practices for integration of biodiversity in farm management.
