Resumen de Preserving permanent mountain grasslands in Western Europe: Why are promising approaches not implemented more widely?
Ika Darnhofer, Markus Schermer, Melanie Steinbacher, Marine Gabillet, Karoline Daugstad
To protect grasslands and maintain the ecosystem services they provide, many European countries have been offering agri-environment measures aimed at maintaining extensive grazing by cattle, sheep or goats. Yet, despite more than two decades of agri-environment measures, semi-natural mountain pastures are still seen as threatened by abandonment and subsequent shrub encroachment. Building on a three-round Delphi inquiry, we analyse the perception of a range of experts on how measures aimed at maintaining mountain grasslands are designed and implemented in Austria, France and Norway. Results show that the experts see the need for a stronger involvement of diverse regional actors, the need to increase the flexibility given to farmers in managing mountain grasslands, and the need to reconceptualise monitoring as a social learning process. While these approaches are implemented in some ‘best practice’ examples, they are not widespread. Understanding these approaches as requiring double-loop learning may contribute to explaining their limited spread. Indeed, they build on a radically different conceptualization of farmers and of researchers, and thus of how agri-environment measures need to be designed and implemented to be effective. Yet, such radical changes are likely to be resisted.
