Abstract
The current decline of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes also impacts the provision of ecosystem services. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop and implement incentive-based conservation policies to counteract the on-going loss. This
paper presents suggestions on the specific topic of how an agri-environment index should be designed by taking into account specific ecological and economic factors that reflect benefits and costs of biodiversity conservation schemes in grasslands. In general, an agri-environment index is a set of indicators that are combined to quantify he benefits of investing in – for instance – a given location, project, or region.
Within the paper we show that the general structure of such an index is recommended to be a benefits-to-cost ratio, whereby the conservation benefits are accounted for by the following three factors: (i) the Conservation Significance Factor takes into account the ecological quality of a site and points out its significance for biodiversity
conservation, (ii) the Connectivity Factor regards the conservation significance from a regional perspective and evaluates the function of the site in the broader landscape and (iii) the Conservation Management Factor estimates the potential biodiversity outcomes induced by specific management actions.An additional Cost Factor reflects the amount of money that the landholder demands as compensation payment for his
conservation services.The paper points out that conservation payment schemes with an agri-environment index might be a promising approach to encourage and compensate farmers for biodiversity-friendly management actions.
