For achieving politically set goals, a range of instruments exists. These are techniques, ways or procedures used by different political levels to influence economic, social or spatial processes. By analysing literature, we created an overview of instruments motivating European farmers to conserve biodiversity. While the EU nature directives represent the backbone of EU biodiversity legislation, also the basic requirements under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) operate de facto as a regulatory baseline, impacting ca. 84% of the EU’s farmland. Yet, the potential of EU regulation and incentives to support biodiversity friendly agricultural practices under the CAP, remains largely unrealised. In the future CAP, the new conditionality might have positive impacts on biodiversity provision. Within the future eco-schemes, 20 of 45 practices proposed by the European Commission explicitly target biodiversity, with agro-ecology, agroforestry and high nature value farming having it as a central objective. Taking a deeper look into incentives, we found a broad bundle of schemes operating mainly as Payments for Environmental Services to achieve biodiversity objectives. Their main areas of biodiversity action are to: i) extensify intensive agroecosystems, ii) maintain the management of extensive agroecosystems facing abandonment and/or intensification, and iii) maintain or restore agricultural habitats. Promising initiatives come from the private and public sector, and include measure-based and increasingly result-based approaches. The uptake of such incentives is determined by farm characteristics, farmers’ intrinsic motivations and the societal, community and landscape context they are placed in.

Socioeconomic studies in 10 EU countries found factors influencing the adoption of biodiversity-enhancing practices by farmers.

Functional Role of Biodiversity: We see that biodiversity provides services like pollination or soil fertility, which could encourage adoption of such practices. However, farmers face trade-offs: changes in production patterns and related costs, as well as governance uncertainty, administrative burden, unproductivity, and social non-conformity might outweigh benefits. Also, farmers valuing biodiversity primarily for its services mostly adopt short-term measures.

System Reconfiguration/Societal Transition: System reconfiguration, recognizing both the intrinsic value of biodiversity and its functional services, may be a more sustainable approach. We find that farmers valuing biodiversity's intrinsic value are more likely to adopt holistic conservation practices. However, farmers lack skills and knowledge of cause-effect relationships between practices and biodiversity benefits, hindering the implementation of effective measures and self-monitoring of environmental success. Stakeholders—such as researchers, advisors, input suppliers and peers—can play an important role in farmers’ decision-making, though they are perceived as less effective in promoting biodiversity.

Incentives: To promote long-term biodiversity management, knowledge transfer and educational programs are crucial to bridge knowledge gaps and foster a deeper understanding of biodiversity’s role in farming and society. A shift toward new incentives, covering costs and risks, along with a reduction in bureaucratic hurdles, could encourage greater adoption. To minimize trade-offs or exploit synergies between biodiversity and productivity, such incentives should rely on flexible policy options, tailored to the target area/issue: result-based features may address productivity and social acceptance, while collective elements might enhance cost-effectiveness at the landscape scale. Overall, challenges related to indicators and independent monitoring systems must be overcome. Finally, to make biodiversity a business model, integration into broader concepts like regenerative agriculture is needed, as the market response for biodiversity as a standalone objective is still low.

Farmers play a crucial role for the provision of biodiversity. Based on a large-scale farm survey across Europe with about 700 respondents, we identified some crucial factors that influence farmers’ decisions to integrate biodiversity into their farm management. 

The findings and practical suggestions to support farmers to enhance biodiversity are:

1. Support cooperation along the value chain, i.e. through the implementation of food hubs at community level, especially where markets are developing, with the aim to reconnect consumers with producers, inform about use of produce in (modern) diets, provide education, but also develop markets and marketing strategies based on biodiversity.
2. Focus on support of effective biodiversity measures; Farmers are strongly motivated by care for the environment and nature, as well as environmental effectiveness.
3. Implement spatial coordination or agglomeration bonus in biodiversity measures for connecting habitats, and consider a wider set of spatial aspects important for farmers in landscape planning to connect habitats; Farmers need financial support for the implementation, but beyond that also for the maintenance, e.g. on an annual basis.
4. Offer independent environmental advisory service for farmers, as they are crucial for successful implementation and management of biodiversity measures, and to close knowledge gaps how to maximise biodiversity benefits.
5. There is limited potential for biodiversity labelling. While farmers show big interest in participating biodiversity business models based on measurable biodiversity key performance indicators (KPIs) facilitated by private companies, specific biodiversity labels are not enhancing farmers’ willingness to participate agri-environmental schemes, if labelling opportunities exists. We therefore suggest to rather further develop the EU organic label towards biodiversity protection, or support private initiatives to make efforts for biodiversity visible to consumers.

Scientific evidence plays an important role in shaping policy decisions. In light of that, empirical scientists often find themselves working to bridge the gap between their research and its potential policy impact. To help with that, we present a list of SHOWCASE-tested steps: