| abstract: |
The objective of the project is to provide a conceptual basis, evidence, tools and improved incentive and policy options to support the "smart" provision of public goods by the EU agriculture and forestry ecosystems, in the light of trade-offs and conflicts brought about by prospective intensification scenarios, using a transdisciplinary approach. PROVIDE will consider a wide range of public goods, including the scope for intensification to produce negative externalities, in relation with a wide set of legislations. It will address the issue in a multi-scale framework working both at the EU level and at case study level in thirteen Countries of the EU. The practical results of the project will be: a renewed (“un-packed”) conceptualization of the notion of public goods; an operational framework to support the smart provision of public goods; a toolbox putting together an inventory/mapping of options, operational means for valuation and evaluation, and a selection of evaluated policy/sector mechanisms; a consolidated and long-lasting community of knowledge and practice. The project will achieve the above results through a mapping and inventory of public goods and the mechanisms producing such goods, allowing to identify ’hotspots’ for mechanisms and policy development. Around these ’hotspots’, the project will then value different public goods and explore value transferability across several regions and ecosystems. Next, to meet a smart production of public goods, consistent with the current needs of productivity, bioeconomy strategy and rural development, innovative policy tools and mechanisms will be comparatively assessed and evaluated. The outcomes of these activities will feed information into the framework and toolbox. All these processes will be co-developed with stakeholders, so that the framework and toolbox will be a co-constructed product allowing incremental development also beyond the lifetime of the project, maximizing PROVIDE’s impact. |
