Comparative assessment of agri-environment programmes in federal states of Germany

According to Article 16 of Regulation (EC) No. 746/96 all member states of the EC are required to evaluate their agri-environment programmes to ascertain the environmental and socio-economic impacts. Analysing these impacts is a frontier topic for scientists with much research in progress. This article contributes to this research agenda in developing and applying a scheme for the evaluation of agri-environment measures from an ecological and economic point of view. The agri-environment programmes of all German federal states are systematically compared with regard to their impacts on biotic resources. Expert opinions obtained from a Delphi study serve as indicators for the ecological consequences of the programmes. Two measures for the ecological cost effectiveness of the agri-environment programmes are derived and applied. For the economic evaluation the cost effectiveness ratio and the benefit cost ratio of the programmes are calculated. Thus, this article presents an example for an integrated ecological–economical assessment of policy measures. It is shown that with respect to the protection of biotic resources by agri-environment programmes, no contradiction between ecology and economics exists in Germany. Improved biotic resource conservation is also economically advantageous.