This year’s theme of the World Soil Day 2020 ‘Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity’ is very much at the heart of the CONSOLE project where we are looking at innovative contract solutions for the delivery of environmental public goods.

Only by fostering the interlinkages between farming activities, soil organisms and natural processes from an ecological and a socio-economic point of view a transition to a more sustainable agricultural production is possible.

The CONSOLE factsheets provide a valuable source of voluntary environment and climate measures demonstrating that:

You can download some of the CONSOLE project case studies related to soils.

• AT4-The Humus-Program of the Ökoregion Kaindorf
• BE2-FLANDERS – Flemish Forest Group
• BE4-Flemish nature management plan
• DE1-Viticulture on steep slopes creates diversity in the Moselle valley
• ES4-Monitoring and boosting environmentally beneficial practices in the olive grove within the framework of the new CAP measures
• IRL3– BRIDE – Biodiversity Regeneration in a Dairying Environment
• IT6- INTEGRATED TERRITORIAL PROJECTS – (ITPs) /territorial agreement
• NL1- Kromme Rijn Collective management
• NL2- Green Deal Dutch Soy
• UK1- Delivering multiple environmental benefits in the South Pennines
• UK3- Building natural flood management knowledge and capacity in Wensleydale

During these months, in the CONSOLE project we are making known the 58 case studies, from 13 European countries (2 case studies in non-European countries) in which we are carrying out our project through the information sheets. In them, you can find a series of data from more than 70 experts and interested parties.

The information structured in Infoboxes

These information sheets are structured in infoboxes in the margins of the pages that allow a quick understanding – and through the use of icons – of the types of contract, characteristics, public goods, payment mechanisms, duration of the contract, etc.

The four types of contracts

In this publication we want to present the four main types of contract of the CONSOLE project:

Results-based / Results-oriented (RB / RO)

Contracts that specify an environmental / climate result as a benchmark (in RB solutions, results are the benchmark Even for payments).

Collective implementation / cooperation (CO / COOP)

Contracts Implementation of a formalized cooperation between farmers / actors to deliver AECPG (in CO solutions, even payments are issued collectively and then distributed among members of the collective).

The value chain Contracts based on the (CV)

Contracts that connect the delivery of AECPG with the production of private goods.

Land tenure-based contracts (LT)

Land tenure arrangements with environmental clauses.

Figure shows that 22 contract solutions are assigned to the main contract type of collective implementation/cooperation (CO/COOP), including 18 cases representing collective implementation and 4 representing cooperations. Five collective case studies are double-counted because a second main contract type is involved. CO/COOP contract solutions are thus the most numerous in the project closely followed by result-based/result-oriented (RB/RO) solutions (21 cases). The distribution of RB and RO contract solutions in the RB/RO pillar is nearly half/half; 11 of the contract solutions are explicitly result-based, 10 contract solutions are result-oriented contracts. Again, 7 RB/RO contract solutions are characterised by incorporating a second main contract type. 15 case studies are assigned to the contract type group of value chain (VC) based solutions; 10 case studies belong to the group of land tenure (LT) based contracts (4 case studies each includes a second main contract type). Finally, there are 3 case studies which are not directly assignable to one of the four contract types, therefore, they are assigned to an additional category named “others”.

In principle, CONSOLE case studies are examples of existing, innovative and effective contract solutions aimed at improving the provision of AECPGs.
However, for the purposes of covering failures, CONSOLE case studies can also represent real life proposals of contract solutions that for some reasons have never arrived at the stage of generating impact, but that can provide relevant insights (e.g. measures that opened calls without participation, contract proposals with no uptake, measures proved impossible due to regulatory constraints at EU level, etc.)

Moreover, a CONSOLE case study is a case of real implementation of a specific contract “type”. In accordance with the CONSOLE deliverable D1.1. contract solutions suited to be a case study in CONSOLE are:

Also contract solutions representing combinations or hybrids of these contract “types” are suited to be case studies in CONSOLE. Practice- or action-based contracts, today’s dominating approach, have been excluded on purpose. Still there are some contrat solution case studies that contain practice-based elements, for example where the payments are (partly) based on management prescriptions.

Besides representing real cases of contract types emphasised by CONSOLE, additional requirements have been considered:

The CONSOLE cases studies cover:

The European Commission has launched a European Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste (FLW), which is made up of 70 organizations, public and private, with the general objective of increasing cooperation to avoid food waste.

Because every year, about 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted (García Carretero, 2016), while almost one billion people do not have access to food and are dying of hunger in the world (a situation that has worsened with the current pandemic situation).

Foods that are most wasted.

It includes the member states, the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, FAO, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Environment Program and a list of 37 organizations selected by the EC.

Its objective is to support all stakeholders in defining the necessary measures to avoid food waste; share best practices; and evaluate the progress made over time in reducing food waste; and intersectoral cooperation.

 The first meeting of the European Platform on Food Loss and Food Waste will take place on 29th November in Brussels.