Planning Multifunctional Measures for Efficient Landscape Management: Quantifying and Comparing the Added Value of Integrated and Segregated Management Concepts - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 272

The investigation showed, that the method can be applied using the data of a
regional landscape plan. However, shortcomings of the cost calculation should be
addressed in the future with respect to the used data base. The estimation of costs
for measures that are land use integrated and of those that address biotope
maintenance and re-establishment is based on lump sums. For the land use inte-
grated measures, the data used in this study did not include the specific site
conditions, which would have differentiated the loss of revenue. In addition, the
cost for compensating farmers for a decrease in revenue per hectare, were not
included in the calculation for measures that require distinct land use changes.
Therefore, in a real implementation situation, the costs for some of the measures,
especially for biodiversity and climate mitigation, may be even higher than we
presumed, particularly if the public must purchase the land. We consider this
shortcoming to be acceptable in this study because the cost of compensation
depends greatly on the legal conditions in a real situation. For example there may
be no need for compensation at all if (1) a legal ordinance is in place, (2) the EU
Cross Compliance regulation would demand that a part of the land remains
unused, or (3) if public land for example along rural tracks and farm roads is
illicitly used as farmland. Also the maintenance costs that we used do not include
the revenue which could be generated, also for a maintenance situation.
The method is suitable for an initial estimate of multifunctional effects that
includes possible impacts of policy objectives and their implementation instru-
ments. This can help to prevent unexpected negative side-effects. A prominent
example of this is the funding of energy crop cultivation that has the overriding
objective of contributing to climate change mitigation. The extensive financial
support accepts trade-offs for landscape functions (the provision of ecosystem
services) such as drinking water, biodiversity and even CO 2 -retention function of
soils and ecosystems. Greiff et al. ( 2010 ) emphasize the need for including mul-
tifunctional effects in the design of funding programs.
The analysis results on multifunctionality are not indended to be taken as a
planning guideline. However, the developed method is well suitable for the
analysis of multifunctional effects and trade-offs between landscape functions and
can be used for decision support purpose within planning and implementation
processes.
13.6 Conclusions
The research results show that aiming for integrative, multifunctional landscape
management can indeed provide added value for several landscape functions as
argued for in the context of an integrated model of environmental politics that is
propagated by the EU. Environmental impact assessment, e.g. strategic environ-
mental assessment (SEA) or European Directives such as WFD, already follow
this integrative approach for assessing multiple environmental issues as well as
interaction and cumulative effects. In an integrated context it is clearly beneficial