**Part 2: Ecosystem Restoration in Cultural Landscapes**

### **Germany's Agriculture and UN's Sustainable Development Goal 15**

#### **Ulrich Hampicke**

#### **1. Introduction**

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 within UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN 2015) demands a transition to sustainable life on land on Earth, including a sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainable management of forests, combatting desertification and halting and reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss. More specifically, nine targets include the conservation of forests, drylands, wetlands and mountains and the forestalling of poaching, spread of invasive species and land degradation. Although to prevent extinction of species is explicitly demanded in target 15-5, the measures proposed are incomplete. As observed by Tisdell (2021, this volume), habitat loss, being the most important factor, was overlooked. This contribution confirms Tisdell's arguments in adding that restoring and reclaiming habitats is a matter of urgency not only in remaining semi-natural ecosystems worldwide. It is also imperative in the cultivated landscape, notably in efficiently used agricultural environments. Biodiversity losses are not only caused by land degradation, desertification and the like, but also by proper and (from the farmer's point of view) "sustainable" cropping. The problems involved here are given insufficient attention in SDG 15.

This contribution focuses on biodiversity losses. In addition, threats to physical resources such as groundwater and soils are addressed. Although these are less serious than in other parts of the world, industrial agriculture may also conflict with development goals such as SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), 12 (responsible production and consumption) and 13 (climate action). Of course, any reference to agriculture must take notice of SDG 2 (zero hunger). Some important items of this goal are less pressing in wealthy nations such as Germany. There is no need to further increase crop productivity. Here, target 2.3 (double agricultural productivity) would contradict target 2.4: "implement . . . agricultural practices that . . . help maintain ecosystems . . . and improve land and soil productivity". Socially defined targets such as supporting small-scale food producers, especially women and indigenous peoples, are not relevant in Germany. Notwithstanding, any wealthy country enjoying favorable agricultural conditions has the duty to contribute to

global food security. Section 3 describes how this is accomplished in indirect ways in Germany.

The problems addressed apply to Central Europe as a whole; they are very similar or are becoming so in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Poland and other countries. Therefore, in describing the character of the countryside and the history of land use, reference is made to "Central Europe". However, a more detailed and quantitative analysis applies to Germany, due to some peculiarities of its agricultural policy and the availability of statistical data.

Section 2 pictures the historical development of the countryside from prehistoric times to the present in some detail, thereby emphasizing the species richness of traditional land-use in former times (for a comprehensive account, see Leuschner and Ellenberg 2017). Section 3 outlines Germany's industrial agricultural system operating, its general features and productivity, its contribution to food security, its poor management of physical natural resources, its disastrous effects on biodiversity and some of its immanent risks. Section 4 proposes measures conducive to relieving the drawbacks described beforehand, such as abandoning unnecessary production, better funding and planning. It will turn out that although a complete return to traditional land-use is of course impossible, at least the preservation of habitats in sufficient size can be made safe at moderate costs, thereby reducing the danger of species extinction. Section 5 concludes that the problems at hand reflect the poor talent of modern societies to a sustainable management of public goods.

#### **2. History**

What is called "Central Europe" in this contribution comprises Germany together with parts or the whole of its surrounding countries. The Alps form a clear barrier to the southern Mediterranean world with distinct ecological conditions and cultural traditions while the gradients to the Atlantic, boral and continental environments, west, north and east, are gentler. Central Europe is that part of the world which, in the absence of mankind, would now largely be covered by deciduous forests, dominated by beech (*Fagus sylvatica*), although this species rose to dominance only a few thousand years ago. Furthermore, it is a part of the world where, due to the action of Pleistocene glaciers not long ago (by geological standards), natural resources such as soils are young and more resistant to mismanagement than, for instance, in the tropics.

The periglacial tundra between the northern and the alpine glaciers used to be roamed by large-deer hunters since immemorial times. The world-wide oldest examples of sculptural art, dating some 30,000 years ago, were found in the valley of

the rivulet Lone in southeast Baden-Württemberg. With the retreat of the ice some 13,000 years ago, and vegetation recovering, hunters might have been forced to switch over to fishing and collecting berries, mushrooms and edible plants. Agriculture arrived some 8000 years ago, not gently diffusing but deliberately brought by invaders who left their home territories in southern Anatolia and the "Fertile Crescent" for unknown reasons (Poschlod 2015). The new way of life was adopted by the native people, presumably rather slowly. This not only changed their social life with permanent settlement, surveillance of croplands and stockpiling, but also physiologic changes took place. Gradually, the natives acquired the ability to digest lactose, thus to consume milk products (Haber 2014).

Prehistoric man's impact on the countryside has long been underestimated (Leuschner and Ellenberg 2017). Forests were cleared, less by using primitive axes but rather by fire and farm animals' destructive foraging. The Bronze Age, 3000 to 4000 years ago, saw the transformation of forests into heath, a prominent example being the "Lüneburger Heide" in North Germany. The opening of the countryside provided advantages to plant and animal species adapted to non-forest environments.

Medieval agriculture relied on the small number of crops available since prehistoric times, such as primitive varieties of wheat, other cereals and lentils (Haber 2014). However, the middle ages saw two innovations, one technical, the iron plough, and one social, the three-field system, obliging every farmer to adhere to a strict sequencing of winter cereal, summer cereal and fallow. Medieval agriculture was little productive, unreliable, prone to crop failure and wasting. Reinforced by extreme rainfall events during the "Little Ice Age", soil erosion raged (Poschlod 2015). The poor fertility of the cropland was half-way maintained by a permanent transport of nutrients from the forest, either by deliberate collection of litter or by farm animals' movements. They were driven to what had remained of the forests during the day and brought back to the crop fields in the evening in order to deposit their dung. Contrary to what is often misconceived today, medieval land-use used to be intensive. Like in poor African countries today, every paltry piece of wood was a valuable find used for cooking, every bunch of grass was collected as feedstuff. As a result, open territory with scant vegetation spread, providing optimal conditions for numerous plant and animal species adapted to warm environments, many of them of sub-Mediterranean origin. On its face, paradoxically, wastage furthered biodiversity. The remnants of these biotopes, aptly called semi-cultured landscape ("Halbkulturlandschaft", Wilmanns 1993) and now protected, offer important opportunities for recreation and enjoyment in nature today (Figure 1).

opportunities for recreation and enjoyment in nature today (Figure 1).

transport of nutrients from the forest, either by deliberate collection of litter or by farm animals' movements. They were driven to what had remained of the forests during the day and brought back to the crop fields in the evening in order to deposit their dung. Contrary to what is often misconceived today, medieval land-use used to be intensive. Like in poor African countries today, every paltry piece of wood was a valuable find used for cooking, every bunch of grass was collected as feedstuff. As a result, open territory with scant vegetation spread, providing optimal conditions for numerous plant and animal species adapted to warm environments, many of them of sub-Mediterranean origin. On its face, paradoxically, wastage furthered biodiversity. The remnants of these biotopes, aptly called semi-cultured landscape ("Halbkulturlandschaft", Wilmanns 1993) and now protected, offer important

**Figure 1.** Remnant of semi-cultured landscape, today appreciated for recreation and enjoyment. Chalk grassland "Kleiner Dörnberg" near Kassel, Germany. Source: Photos by the author. **Figure 1.** Remnant of semi-cultured landscape, today appreciated for recreation and enjoyment. Chalk grassland "Kleiner Dörnberg" near Kassel, Germany. Source: Photos by the author.

4 As late as in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, agriculture became a matter of science and practical improvement. An outstanding personality in Germany was Albrecht Thaer. The former fallow land was now tilled with either food plants like potatoes or sugar beet, or feed, preferably clover (*Trifolium pratense*) or alfalfa (*Medicago sativa*), in order to enhance the nitrogen supply. Animals were fed regularly, feed conserves, mainly hay, provided adequate livelihood during the winter. Excrements were collected, carefully stored and brought to the fields as fertilizer. Compared with today, crop yields and animal performance remained low, but except for rare events such as the "year without summer", following the As late as in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, agriculture became a matter of science and practical improvement. An outstanding personality in Germany was Albrecht Thaer. The former fallow land was now tilled with either food plants like potatoes or sugar beet, or feed, preferably clover (*Trifolium pratense*) or alfalfa (*Medicago sativa*), in order to enhance the nitrogen supply. Animals were fed regularly, feed conserves, mainly hay, provided adequate livelihood during the winter. Excrements were collected, carefully stored and brought to the fields as fertilizer. Compared with today, crop yields and animal performance remained low, but except for rare events such as the "year without summer", following the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1816, crop failures subsided. Biodiversity richness may have declined locally but not in general.

The most important developments in the nineteenth century were the destruction of what had remained as natural biotopes in the countryside, above all, the peatlands, and the dismissal of the semi-cultured countryside. As opposed to today's valuation, heath, barren grassland on limestone and sandy soil—mostly used as commons—were regarded as ugly and as waste lands. Losses became so heavy that around 1900

a conservation movement arose, and the first protected areas were established by private initiatives, such as in the "Lüneburger Heide". Equally important was the taming of almost all watercourses from small creeks to large rivers such as the Rhine (Blackbourn 2008). These activities enhanced agriculturally valuable areas and, transportation on the land being still laborious, facilitated shipping.

Although Justus Liebig propagated the use of mineral fertilizer, it came into use only very slowly until the First World War. The first pesticides appeared, preferably in viniculture, some of them dangerous for their applicants. Agricultural techniques progressed gradually but the system as a whole did not undergo revolutionary changes. In tilling and all other outdoor work, the pace was still given by horse or oxen, countless farm-laborers and maids performed their hard work. Wild plants were tolerated or even utilized in the agriculturally productive areas. Of course, weeds were regulated but never to the point of extinction. A large number of crops, almost all of them fallen into oblivion today—flax (*Linum usitatissimum*), buckwheat (*Fagopyrum esculentum*), poppy (*Papaver somniferum*) and others—offered variety for many concomitant plant and animal species. Permanent grassland used to be colorful and rich in species; a typical meadow—by then regarded as "fatty meadow" ("Fettwiese")—consisted of 40 to 60 plant species, as shown to-day in their scattered remains in plots of twenty-five square meters. Poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, in describing her Westphalian mother-country, wrote that " . . . every step on its meadows gives rise to the soaring of yellow, blue and milky-white butterflies". It is remarkable that in contrast to most crops and all fruit trees, grassland cultivation made and still makes use of indigenous plants, thus incorporating elements of former wilderness.

Nineteenth-century agriculture shows some resemblance to current organic farming. Primitive and destructive features of medieval land-use were overcome, but modern practices, detrimental to biodiversity and natural resources, were still a long way off. During the first half of the twentieth century, the first tractors appeared and chemical fertilization developed in very modest ways. Yet, by 1950, the open countryside was still more or less resembled the model developed during the nineteenth century. To be sure, natural ecosystems such as peatlands and natural watercourses were mostly lost and the semi-cultured landscape was reduced. However, agricultural biotopes proper continued to be multifarious in every respect. Cereals plus the greater part of their accompanying weeds had been introduced thousands of years ago. All species of fruit trees had been brought by the Romans. American cultures such as new-world beans, potatoes, tomatoes, maize, tobacco and others were introduced during the Renaissance epoch and later. Despite all this,

agriculture never gave the impression of being a foreign matter, as in the case of New Zealand where even beetles decomposing the droppings of cattle had to be imported. To the contrary, the traditional Central European countryside was the result of 8000 years of traditions, gentle innovations, adaptation and thus unique in the world. Not least, it used to be aesthetically attractive, as immortalized in many pieces of art. As late as in 1950, nobody had the presentiment that agricultural practices could lead to the extinction of species. Beyond all doubt, it is worthwhile to preserve elements of this unique feature now and for the future.

As for forests, their destructive use in the past has already been mentioned. Remarkably, the area left to the forest today is quite the same as during the middle ages. However, former forest quality was very low, orders from sovereigns for better treatment having been fruitless in most cases. In early modern times—from the fifteenth and sixteenth century onward—various industries such as pottery, glass manufacture and metallurgy of all kind needed heat, which, before the advent of coal, could only be supplied by charcoal (Küster 2008; Leuschner and Ellenberg 2017). Despite the famous call by Carlowitz as early as 1713 to limit wood use to the volume growing up, the recovery of forests was a performance of nineteenth century foresters. Their predilection for coniferous trees, even in regions less suitable for spruce (*Picea abies*), left us with a questionable legacy, all the more so with climate change.

#### **3. Industrial Agriculture in Germany**

In this section, the physical structures of Germany's agriculture and food system 2000–2020 are outlined. Second, its performance and contribution to public welfare are appreciated. Third, its negative impact on natural resources and, most particularly, biodiversity is described in detail.

#### *3.1. Physical Structure*

A citizen of the 1950s, hypothetically transferred to 2020, would not recognize their agrarian countryside. The outstanding feature of today's agriculture is its high productivity, as compared with the traditional system. Figure 2a (left) shows a rye field as it may have existed 200 years ago, Figure 2b (right) a modern wheat field. Its yield is ten times the yield on the left. Table 1 shows some selected data on former and present productivities. Notice that yields around 1900 in the left column have already been higher than 100 years before.

**Figure 2.** Former and current productivity of crops. (**a**) Rye field reproduced from around 1800. (**b**) Modern wheat field. Source: Photos by the author. **Figure 2.** Former and current productivity of crops. (**a**) Rye field reproduced from around 1800. (**b**) Modern wheat field. Source: Photos by the author.


**Table 1.** Yield increases in German agriculture. **Table 1.** Yield increases in German agriculture.

of agricultural commodities in Germany. The adequate physical measure is the Source: Adapted from (StJELF 2002, p. XXVIII; StJELF 2016, Tab. 98 and 166, supplemented).

energy content of every product—one kg of starch contains 17 megajoule (MJ, 106

Joule), one kg of plant oil 39 MJ and so on. In the graphic, energy content is the general measure; a detailed description of the calculation is found in Hampicke (2018, in German). In 2013, cropland and grassland produced a harvest of 2066 exajoule (EJ, 1018 J). Two thirds or 1333 EJ were used as feedstuff, enlarged with 144 petajoule (PJ, 1015 J) from imports. The second largest share of the overall harvest, 377 PJ, are plants mostly used for technical energy—maize for biogas, the oil of rapeseed for diesel Germany's agriculture comprises roughly 17 million hectares, 12 million for crops and 5 million for permanent grassland. Figure 3 shows production and fluxes of agricultural commodities in Germany. The adequate physical measure is the energy content of every product—one kg of starch contains 17 megajoule (MJ, 10<sup>6</sup> Joule), one kg of plant oil 39 MJ and so on. In the graphic, energy content is the general measure; a detailed description of the calculation is found in Hampicke (2018, in German).

fuel and wheat for ethanol as additive to petrol, and some for raw materials. Vegetable food ranks only third with 323 PJ plus 6 PJ from fruits of which 219 PJ are consumed domestically, that is only eleven percent of the total harvest. Feedstuff produces 255 PJ of animal products—meat, milk and eggs—the ratio of feed energy to product energy being around seven to one due to the animals' energy requirements and for other reasons. The high energy losses in livestock production

are well known.

7

**Figure 3.** General structure of the German agriculture and food system. All numbers in Petajoule (PJ = 10<sup>15</sup> J). VP, VC, VE, VI: Vegetable products produced (329 including fruits), consumed domestically (219), exported (98), imported (83), AP, AC, AE, AI: same for animal products (225, 110, 107, 72), FI: feed imports (144), T, TI material used for biogas, biodiesel and bioethanol plus 50 for technical raw materials, imports (98). Source: Adapted from Hampicke (2018, p. 56), simplified.

In 2013, cropland and grassland produced a harvest of 2.066 exajoule (EJ, 10<sup>18</sup> J). Two thirds or 1.333 EJ were used as feedstuff, enlarged with 144 petajoule (PJ, 10<sup>15</sup> J) from imports. The second largest share of the overall harvest, 377 PJ, are plants mostly used for technical energy—maize for biogas, the oil of rapeseed for diesel fuel and wheat for ethanol as additive to petrol, and some for raw materials. Vegetable food ranks only third with 323 PJ plus 6 PJ from fruits of which 219 PJ are consumed domestically, that is only eleven percent of the total harvest. Feedstuff produces 255 PJ of animal products—meat, milk and eggs—the ratio of feed energy to product energy being around seven to one due to the animals' energy requirements and for other reasons. The high energy losses in livestock production are well known.

There is much foreign trade in agricultural commodities. In total, 98 PJ in grain, potatoes and sugar are exported, 83 PJ, mostly in vegetables and fruits, are imported. For animal products, the figures are 107 PJ in export and 72 PJ in import. Altogether, Germany shows an export surplus of 15 PJ in vegetable and 35 PJ in animal products.

Given the relatively small area of German agriculture, the output is enormous. Not unexpectedly, adverse side effects on natural resources occur which will be described in the sequel. Striking features of the system are the very high share of feedstuff, the production of technical energy and export surpluses.

#### *3.2. Positive Welfare E*ff*ects and Unwarrantable Criticisms*

Judging justly, the system's performance in terms of food security has to be acknowledged. It should not be taken for granted that food scarcity used to be a feature only of the distant past and is definitely overcome. Germany contributes in some respect to the world-wide availability of food in that it is self-sufficient and imports products almost entirely from economically well-off countries, for instance vegetables and oranges from Spain. Its exports will be discussed later.

As for product quality, commodities produced in conventional cropping contain residues of chemicals, especially pesticides, for the most part within dosages permitted by regulations. Health risks cannot be ruled out altogether but they are modest as compared with those posed by street traffic, sport activities, alcohol consumption, smoking, unhealthy diet and obesity. It should not be ignored, however, that the latter risks are often run of one's own free will while those from pesticide residues are difficult to avoid.

Some criticisms of modern agriculture are exaggerated. Although its fossil energy requirement is poorly documented, it does not exceed three to four percent of the net energy consumed by the nation. Traffic, often of questionable necessity, needs thirty percent. The reader is invited to consult Table 5 in Section 4.2.1. An often-heard reproach is the energy requirement of mineral nitrogen fertilizer, produced by Haber-Bosch technology. The requirement is around 40 kilojoules per gram nitrogen. Multiplied by 1.7 million tons of mineral nitrogen fertilizer applied per year, this amounts to 68 PJ or 0.76 percent of net energy consumption.

Statistics inform that German agriculture produces 11.5 percent of the nation's greenhouse gases, thus contributing to anthropogenic climate change. Table 2 shows details. Evidently, emissions C are partly avoidable although at some cost. Cropping in peatlands and converting grassland to crop land (D plus E) must be curtailed anyhow for other reasons than caring for climate. There remain emissions of methane (CH4) from ruminants and nitrous oxide (N2O) from fertilizers (A plus B). Assuming these emissions and some from C to be unavoidable, agricultural contribution to climate hazards would reduce to some six to seven percent, a very modest share in view of the fundamental necessity to produce food.


#### **Table 2.** Greenhouse gas emissions from German agriculture.

Source: Adapted from WBA and WBW (2016, p. 19).

#### *3.3. Negative E*ff*ects on Physical Resources*

Although misuse of soils leading to massive water erosion such as in the middle ages is rare, not all soils receive sufficient care. Crop fields in eastern Germany sometimes comprise several hundred hectares. The absence of hedgerows, coppices and other structures facilitates wind erosion. One such event in 2011 produced a dust-cloud leading to a mass accident in a motorway, causing eight fatalities.

Growing specialization results in the separation of regions with excessive livestock rearing, mostly in the northwest, from others confined to cropping. In the latter, mostly eastern regions, soils receive no organic fertilizer, fertility is safeguarded alone by chemical inputs. Although yields still appear satisfactory, consequences in the long run are dubious.

Both shortcomings mentioned could be mitigated within the system given. This is more difficult and expensive regarding the problems addressed in the sequel. Table 3 shows the general nitrogen balance of the German agriculture. Inputs from mineral fertilizer, imported protein feed and other sources amount to roughly 2.6 million tons per year while exports in vegetable and animal products sum up to only 0.9 million tons. The difference of 1.7 million tons per year is lost in the countryside. Almost two thirds trickle with water leakage, jeopardizing groundwater quality. Only 50 percent of 692 measurements in agricultural regions disclose good drinking water quality (less than 25 milligrams NO<sup>3</sup> <sup>−</sup> per liter), 28 percent surpass maximum permissible loads decreed by European law (50 mg/L), and 22 percent lie in between (BMUB and BMEL 2016). Germany has been sentenced by the European Court of Justice for not realizing the European Nitrate Directive. Until today, the

situation would be much worse without the biogeochemical process of denitrification in subsoils. In the absence of oxygen (O2), some bacteria are able to transform the nitrogen contained in NO<sup>3</sup> <sup>−</sup> into innocuous N2. These bacteria consume organic matter diffusely distributed in the subsoil and quit their benevolent activity once this matter together with pyrite (FeS2) is exhausted. Obliged to prepare for such a future, action re-establishing a controlled nitrogen management is imperative. The deterioration of drinking water, essential to life, cannot be tolerated.



Source: A and B adapted from (Bach 2008), D from (StJELF 2016), Table 75, average 2014–2016, C and E from (Hampicke 2018).

Forty percent of the nitrogen losses are transformed into gaseous ammonia (NH3). German agriculture produces 680,000 tons of ammonia per year (Haenel et al. 2016), a quantity strongly reduced for a long time past had it been emitted by industrial sources. Although part of it subsides to crop fields and meadows these fertilizing, a large share is lost to biotopes which should not be fertilized in this way. Terrestrial eutrophication by ammonia is an important factor of biodiversity decline, in addition to the factors described later. In forests and in the open countryside, nitrophilous plant species profiting from fertilizing suppress and displace many other less competitive species. In forests, species-rich ground vegetation is replaced by uniform stands of blackberries (*Rubus spec.*) and aggressive grasses such as *Calamagrostis spec.*

Agriculture being an open system, it is impossible to avoid nitrogen losses altogether, but the disorganization of the nitrogen circle on the current scale is intolerable. The most important agent is animal husbandry. In regions with excessive livestock rearing, too much manure is deposited in the fields; regulations are lax. Ammonia is emitted from stables, from manure deposits and by inappropriate methods of manure distribution. To a lesser extent, groundwater and atmosphere

are also affected by cropping and viniculture. Among mineral fertilizers, urea is increasingly used for its low price. It easily decomposes to ammonia.

#### *3.4. The Extermination of Biodiversity*

The strong word in the headline of this section is warranted. Upon meticulous studies of hundreds of vegetation assessments 60 to 70 years old and their comparison with the current situation, a research group at the University of Göttingen concluded that the population sizes of common plant species (not orchids or other rarities) omnipresent in the agrarian countryside for thousands of years have declined to little more than five percent their sizes in the 1950s (Leuschner et al. 2014 and other contributions in the volume). This loss has been aptly called an unintentional large-scale ecological experiment with unknown consequences (Nentwig 2000). The fact that these formerly common plants have still become not rare enough to include them into "Red Data Books" on endangered species misleads to underestimate the consequences of their decline. Butterflies, bees and other insects, depending on these plants, for instance their blossoms, have dramatically declined both in numbers of species and in population sizes (Vogel 2017). While bird populations in forests, at the seashore and even in cities are rather stable, birds adapted to crop fields and meadows, often breeding on the ground, have become rarities or vanished altogether (Hötger et al. 2014).

The reasons are obvious and partly clearly visible: Loss of habitat, ubiquitous eutrophication, exposition to pesticides and others. Let us distinguish four types of biotopes: semi-cultured landscape, grassland, crop fields and structures such as hedgerows, coppices, watercourses and others.

Fortunately, most areas of semi-cultured landscape that survived "cultivation" efforts during the nineteenth and early twentieth century (see Section 2 above) are protected today. Others owe their persistence to military training activities. While the area of these biotopes is less of a problem, their quality is often unsatisfactory. In order to preserve favorable conditions for their characteristic plant and animal species, activities carried out there for thousands of years have to be continued, otherwise coppice and finally wood will invade the areas. A case in point is sheep grazing on barren but species-rich grassland and heather. In some regions, such activities are carried out with considerable success, in others less so. Semi-cultured biotopes and grassland alone, often blending each other, comprise around forty percent of all endangered plant species listed in "Red Data Books" (see Box 1). However, due to conservation efforts, rare species on calcareous soils, among them orchids much appreciated by naturalists, sometimes fare better than sorrel (*Rumex acetosa*) in

agricultural biotopes proper. Wet environments may also be qualified as semi-cultured when they interpose between the poor remnants of mires still in a natural state and moist grassland utilized more thoroughly. Plants and animals there, mostly members of "Red Data Books" too, face even worse conditions than those in dry environments.

The area of permanent grassland is diminishing. Daily, almost 70 hectares are withdrawn from agriculture to the benefit of settlements, traffic ways and so on (BfN 2016, p. 80). If cropland was affected, its losses were compensated by the transformation of grassland into cropland so that grassland alone paid the toll. Today, some regulations are retarding the process. A certain portion of grassland must be cultivated intensively, implying high fertilizer input and frequent mowing or grazing, High-yielding milk cows depend on energy-rich feed not producible otherwise. This kind of grassland is worthless for biodiversity, very few plant species are present such as white clover (*Trifolium album*), dandelion (*Taraxacum o*ffi*cinale*) and some grasses (Dierschke and Briemle 2002). None the less, it is still valuable for erosion control and carbon storage.

#### **Box 1.** Endangered plant species in Germany.

The Red Data Book on plants (Korneck et al. 1998) designates all species assumed to be endangered or already extinct. Several degrees of threat are distinguished and the species are classified according to the biotopes they live in. So it is possible to assess which biotopes and which kinds of land use contribute most to the threat. In Table 4, four groups of biotopes are distinguished: (1) agricultural areas including the semi-cultured countryside, (2) biotopes often in contact with agricultural activities, such as peatland near moist meadows, (3) forests and (4) others, mostly covering limited areas. In the first two groups, sub-groups are distinguished.

The entry "crop area" comprises all species in cropland-dominated landscapes; weeds proper, dependent on tillage, are much worse off. The relatively favorable situation in productive grassland is due to the fact that till today, only plants resistant to eutrophication and other factors have survived there. Forests appear less beset with endangering, but this is true only for higher plants, the situation for mosses, lichens, fungi and insects is far from favorable. None the less, important conclusions can be drawn. Dry grassland and heather, the semi-cultured landscape, contribute a quarter of all endangered species, agriculture proper together with semi-cultured landscapes contribute nearly half. Add a substantial share of the entry "biotopes in contact or influenced"—peatlands dried, waters eutrophicated and others—then agriculture is contributing directly and indirectly almost two thirds to the process of endangering higher plant species. It is to be assumed that the situation is similar regarding animals.


**Table 4.** Extinct and endangered plant species according to the biotopes they occur.

Source: Adapted and compiled by author from Korneck et al. (1998).

Unfortunately, permanent grassland (Figure 4) not confined to these restrictions is losing its species richness by a lingering process. Colorful traditional meadows are replaced by uniform biotopes once the yearly input of nitrogen exceeds 100 kg which is reached easily. Modern techniques add to the impoverishment, mowing with efficient equipment at high speed kills grasshoppers, frogs and hare kids (Oppermann and Krismann 2003; Humbert et al. 2009).

As documented above, the productivity of current conventional crop fields is up to ten times higher than it used to be in pre-industrial agriculture. Stalks of cereals are packed in such a dense way that no living space for weeds would remain even if these had not been eradicated long ago by herbicides (Figure 2b). About 250 plant species in Central Europe are typical for landscapes dominated by crop fields, about 150 depend obligatorily on cropping. This flora element is reduced more than all others, conservation efforts have been neglected for decades

and are still insufficient. Due to their poor competitiveness, the majority of weeds are innocuous. They represent interesting plants for various reasons, perform functions in the landscape, not a few are aesthetically attractive and have the potential of becoming ornamental plants (Meyer and Leuschner 2015). Yet, all are unappreciated by the farmer whose ideal—no plant or animal in the field except the crop—has come true frequently. Unfortunately, permanent grassland (Figure 4) not confined to these restrictions is losing its species richness by a lingering process. Colorful traditional meadows are replaced by uniform biotopes once the yearly input of nitrogen exceeds 100 kg which is reached easily. Modern techniques add to the impoverishment, mowing with efficient equipment at high speed kills grasshoppers, frogs and hare kids (Oppermann and Krismann 2003; Humbert et al. 2009).

peatland 3 114 50 6 nutrient-rich waters 3 83 50 6

**Forests 4 199 13–27 14 Others and alpine 8 168 10–56 18** 

Source: Adapted and compiled by author from Korneck et al. (1998).

**19 287 11–85 22** 

4 35 83 2

**Biotopes often in contact with agriculture or influenced** 


nutrient-poor waters

**Figure 4.** Colorful meadow in the Alps not yet affected by intensification. Source: Photo by the author. **Figure 4.** Colorful meadow in the Alps not yet affected by intensification. Source: Photo by the author.

13 As documented above, the productivity of current conventional crop fields is up to ten times higher than it used to be in pre-industrial agriculture. Stalks of cereals are packed in such a dense way that no living space for weeds would remain even if these had not been eradicated long ago by herbicides (Figure 2b). About 250 plant species in Central Europe are typical for landscapes dominated by crop fields, about The dense packaging of stalks in cereal fields offers optimal conditions for fungi causing plant diseases so that fungicides have become indispensable in conventional cropping. Some cultures such as rapeseed are attacked by a number of insects, aphids have to be combated in cereals. So insecticides add to the menu of pesticides regularly applied to crop fields and thus to one third of Germany's area, menacing many species innocuous to agriculture.

As for structuring elements, the main problem is their mere scarcity. For decades, so-called farmland consolidation measures in East and West Germany have eliminated hedgerows, coppices, road margins, terraces and other elements in order to make farming more efficient. During the socialist epoch in East Germany, many small

watercourses have been pressed into subterranean tubes. In particular in the northern plains, the landscape was and still is regarded as an opportunity to unfold the capacities of industrialized cropping in full measure, disregarding all other functions and benefits the countryside can bestow, let alone its aesthetics.

Summing up, within a few decades, the colors and richness of biotopes and species developed over millennia have been reduced, and in large regions eradicated almost altogether. Despite the abundance of food and other products brought about by this process and despite it relieving farm people from hard work, the past 60 to 70 years in Central Europe represent an example of non-sustainability, contradicting some of the demands of SDG 15, which urgently needs correction.

#### *3.5. Negative Impacts on Agriculture*

Far-sighted agricultural experts increasingly realize the risks farmers incur when they continue the unbalanced way of cropping which has become customary. Crop rotations have become impoverished due to the very small number of economically sound crops with severe risks for soil quality and plant health. Fifty years ago, an expert wrote "the rotation rapeseed—winter wheat—winter barley is to be strictly avoided, diseases both for rapeseed and cereals will accumulate in the soil" (Andreae 1968). Today, this is the standard crop rotation in northeast Germany, the expert's forecast having come true. The overall preference for winter cereals results in upcoming resistance of weeds against herbicides. So, despite heavy spraying, "problem weeds" such as foxtail (*Alopecurus myosoroides*) are becoming serious nuisances. Equally, harmful insects have developed resistance against insecticides, often stimulated by improper and unnecessary spraying.

The situation is aggravated by strict regulations of authorities. A number of pesticides, used for decades, have lost their admissibility or will lose it in the future. One reason among others is the dramatic reduction of insect populations, particularly bees, in recent years. The chemical industry is reluctant in developing new products. Pessimistic forecasts are heard, for instance that rapeseed cultivation will become impossible under these circumstances. The general opinion expressed by experts is that cropping methods must improve substantially in the future.

#### **4. Alternatives**

Of course, it is neither possible nor desirable to restore pre-industrial agriculture as a whole. Unfortunately, the discussion is charged with various misplaced arguments expressed even by conservationists. Some argue that valuing the pre-industrial countryside is a purely nostalgic matter, held by people unwilling to accept change.

Colorful meadows, so the argument goes, have not been "natural" in the past but man-made and therefore lack intrinsic value. Commonly, it is added that it is unbearably expensive to conserve what was useful in the past but no longer is, without supporting this assertion by numbers and calculations.

Three aspects contradict such misconceptions: First, to avoid extinction of species is a moral and legal duty. If all species of the traditional countryside, favored by human action or not, were out of danger in other ecosystems or other countries, their disappearance here would be tolerable in terms of sustainability. However, this is far from true. Most endangered species in Central Europe are also endangered in other regions or will become so in the future once land-use methods here are introduced there. As a wealthy nation having signed the Convention on Biodiversity Conservation, Germany cannot shift the responsibility to conserve to other, mostly less wealthy countries. Second, the public strongly welcomes the remnants of the traditional countryside. The scarcity of colorful meadows is regretted, industrialized agriculture or "agro-factories" are of ill repute, also due to their methods of livestock rearing which cannot be addressed in this contribution. Polls elicit a considerable willingness to pay for conservation and the preservation or restoration of a beautiful landscape (Meyerhoff et al. 2012). Third, the costs for the achievement of substantial progress in biodiversity conservation are low in macroeconomic terms, as will be shown below.

#### *4.1. Organic Agriculture*

As already mentioned in Section 2, modern organic agriculture is in a way akin to pre-industrial farming, except for the mechanical techniques used. So it is near at hand to suggest replacing conventional by organic farming altogether. Despite the enthusiasm expressed by many devotees, no thorough and quantitative assessment of the consequences has ever been published. Refusing mineral nitrogen fertilizer, at least 25 percent of the cropping area must be left to clover or other plants symbiotic with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. There are two consequences: The area producing food for humans is reduced while feed for ruminants is oversupplied to the point that ecologically valuable grassland runs the risk of becoming abandoned. The modest supply of nitrogen together with the refusal of phosphorous fertilizer easily absorbable by plants results in yields per hectare far below those in conventional cropping. It is doubtful whether the system would be able to meet the nutrition needs even of a frugal actual population consuming less animal products.

Organic agriculture is not rejected in this contribution, to the contrary it is appreciated as an interesting alternative to what is criticized above. Some features,

such as its renunciation of pesticides, are strongly welcome. However, rather than adhering to ideological principles almost one hundred years old, it should be open to further development. Perhaps a synthesis of conventional and organic agriculture, in particular avoiding the drawbacks of the former, is the best prospect for the future.

#### *4.2. Remedies*

Returning to Section 3.1, we first discuss three measures conducive to practices less injurious to both physical resources and biodiversity in the countryside. They come to the same conclusion: commodity production should and can be reduced. Thereupon, we point to some problems solvable by more generous funding in combination with spatial planning and expedient practices.

#### 4.2.1. Reduction of Agricultural Output

Twenty years ago, prices of customary agricultural commodities were still unsatisfactory so that new assignments for farmers were in demand. With much enthusiasm and much public money, the production of plant material providing technical energy was propagated and necessary equipment was organized. Today, almost twenty percent of the cropping area is used to produce biogas (CH4) mostly from maize, diesel fuel from rapeseed (FAME) and ethanol as an additive to petrol from cereals and sugar beets. From an engineer's point of view, the biogas system fed with maize is exceptionally cumbersome. After maize is grown, harvested and ensilaged, it is filled into a reactor producing gas which drives a motor generating electric power. Only a fraction of the energy harvested is transformed into electric current.

The agricultural biogas system supplies 4.5 percent of Germany's electricity consumption, FAME and ethanol contribute less than two percent of the energy necessary in transportation. In particular, the biogas system is extremely expensive, its costs are shifted to private households forced to pay high prices for electricity (WBA 2007). Its contribution to climate stabilization is negligible. Table 5 shows that renewable sources supply around fifteen percent of Germany's net energy, the lion's share allotted to wind and solar power. Domestic agricultural plants contribute only negligibly. While biogas production from materials not demanding areas such as old fatty stuff and the like may be sensible, letting agricultural energy production with poor output have 2.3 million hectares must be regarded as questionable policy.


**Table 5.** Germany's technical energy budget 2018.

Source: a) 668 PJ used directly plus electricity produced from regenerative sources, b) around 100 PJ electricity produced from biogas plus FAME and ethanol, c) including agriculture. a) and b) estimated by Hampicke, all other figures from AG Energiebilanzen e.V. (2021), www.ag-energiebilanzen.de, Auswertungstabellen 1990–2018.

Two hundred years ago, David Ricardo (Ricardo 1817) published his famous theory on foreign trade. Every country should export products it owns in abundance or produces more efficiently than others, e.g., wool from England and wine from Portugal. Germany is exporting its scarcest resource—its area. Around one million hectares produce vegetable and animal commodities for export, the area devoted to the latter would be even larger without the feedstuff imports mentioned in Section 3.1. Although a balanced exchange of agricultural commodities may add to overall welfare, net exports (exports in excess of imports) to the extent reached in Germany are questionable (see Box 2). The country is not in need of foreign currency, to the contrary, its balance of trade is too favorable (unfavorable of others). Exports hardly mitigate food scarcity in poor countries but go to solvent consumers, for instance in Russia and China. In some cases, they may even harm domestic production in other countries.

Energy production and net export claim over three million hectares, eighteen percent of Germany's agricultural area of around 17 million hectares. Although "wasted" may be too disparaging an expression, the area is used inefficiently and for the satisfaction of less important demands—in economic terms, it is used inferiorly. At the same time, area is in urgent need for improving the ecological quality of the countryside; for letting space for structural elements and re-establishing less productive but species-rich traditional cropping and grassland areas. It must be noticed that the energy plant system has been introduced fully by political decisions, in no way by the market. It could be abandoned likewise by a wiser decision which appears not to be impossible in the future. Exports are promoted massively by the government with public money. One objective is to stabilize prices, for instance for hog meat exported to China. More fundamentally, export is promoted in order to grant fodder suppliers, livestock rearers, dairies, the meat industry and traders finding sufficient sales or even the scope to grow facing diminishing domestic demand. In short, three million hectares are used in the first place to the benefit of small minorities and to the disadvantage of the public.

#### **Box 2.** Agricultural area exported.

Area agriculturally cultivated in 2013 was 16.7 million hectares (StJELF 2016, table 85). According to Section 3.1 above, total yield was 2.066 EJ. Average productivity was therefore 2066 × 1018/16.7 × 10<sup>6</sup> = 123.7 × 10<sup>9</sup> J/ha, roughly equivalent to a harvest of 8 tons of grain per hectare.

Annual excess export of vegetable products was 15 PJ. Excess export of animal products of 35 PJ has to be multiplied by seven in order to assess the amount of feed necessary. In total, 245 PJ minus 144 PJ of feed imported amounts to 101 PJ, the entire export surplus to 116 PJ.

Having 116 × 1015/123.7 × 10<sup>9</sup> = 938,000, and given rounded average figures, the area exported is roughly one million hectares per year.

As an aside, the much criticized feedstuff imports, mostly protein concentrates, are re-exported completely in animal products and do not contribute to domestic consumption, as frequently asserted.

The argument that Germany's agricultural imports should be balanced by exports is flawed. First, the figures measure net export, export in excess of import. The area imported is probably overestimated because to a large extent, imports consist of vegetables and fruits, often produced in glasshouses needing only limited area. Second and more important, even a net import of agricultural area would not necessarily deserve criticism. No country has the duty to balance imports and exports of the same class of commodities. It would be perfectly right if Germany balanced its net imports of agricultural products by exports of other, for instance industrial products in rich supply, according to Ricardo.

It is true that some countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia) are forced to import food. It would be wiser to import from area-rich countries in need of foreign currency rather than from narrow Germany.

The dubiety of Germany's net export can also be expressed otherwise: In years with average yield, about ten percent of cereals are exported. Without export, yield per hectare could be ten percent lower without decreasing domestic provision. Such de-intensification would add substantially to unburden the countryside from stress produced by excessive fertilization and pesticide spraying

Allusion has been made to a third factor conducive to reducing the stress on the agricultural countryside: decreasing demand. A general reason is aging population, aged people eat less. More specifically, not a few people reflect upon their diet. The "German Society for Nutrition", an expert body, recommends a yearly consumption of meat per person of 30 kg for reasons of heath; the present average is 60 kg per year. In total, 35 percent of the average daily energy intake is from meat, dairy products and eggs. A tendency to avoid excessive meat consumption is observed, specifically among younger people. The reasons are health care, the demand for more quality in exchange for quantity and not least ecological considerations. The massive energy losses incurred in feeding animals as noticed in Section 3.1 are becoming aware to increasing numbers of considerate people. Already a moderate reduction in the consumption of animal products results in a multiple reduction of feed demand. Although extreme reorientations, for instance in favor of veganism, will have to be observed in the future as to their durability, the prospects for reducing stress on the countryside on the part of consumers should not be underrated.

#### 4.2.2. Funding and Planning

Of course, many benevolent reorientations cost money which is the very reason for their neglect. This is particularly true when caring for the integrity of physical resources. The reduction of ammonia emissions requires costly investment in stables, among others filters collecting the gas. Equally costly is equipment depositing liquid manure on or beneath the soil surface instead of throwing it in the air as has been practiced for a long time.

Another important case where money alone solves a problem is the care for the semi-cultured landscape. As mentioned in Section 3.4, sheep grazing is obligatory for maintaining barren chalk-grassland. Similar biotopes, too, demand grazing animals, mechanical care by mowing being often less effective in the long run. Table 6 shows that traditional sheep grazing cannot be carried out by receipts from product sales alone, costs are much higher. The shepherd's very important contribution to landscaping requires payments in excess, just as caring for parks in towns requires funding. It is interesting to notice that in the semi-cultured landscape, no conflict with farmers exists and no ideological obstruction has to be overcome. Everybody loves these biotopes, not a few young people are willing to become shepherds. Some funds are operating, but mostly in the short term, discouraging idealistic people to venture upon a risky future.


**Table 6.** Receipts and costs in landscaping with sheep grazing.

Source: From Berger (2011).

Landscape planning is traditional in Germany for decades, university chairs and numerous private firms are active. Its power to enforce its ideas in practice is poor, however. Often plans are produced "for the filing cabinet". Yet, urgent problems call for authoritative spatial planning. The lamentable division of the country into regions rearing far too much livestock and others with only few farm animals has been mentioned in Section 3.3. Even upon an overall reduction of livestock rearing along the lines suggested in Section 4.2.1, groundwater quality can only be safeguarded by a more even distribution of livestock, at the same time providing more soil with organic manure. Lacking instruments to incite farms to agree to such reorientation, techniques are elaborated to condense liquid manure and transport it over long distances. This is fussy and expensive.

Landscape planning is not even capable of safeguarding a sufficient provision of structuring elements in the agrarian countryside. If a motorway is planned, it is built within a few years, a hedgerow, urgently needed against wind erosion, will meet its realization postponed to all eternity.

Paradoxically, the costs for the achievement of substantial progress in biodiversity conservation are low in macroeconomic terms. Table 7 shows a compilation of measures suggested by Hampicke (2014) in a study for a renowned foundation. Comprised are four measures: (1) Safeguarding the ecological quality of the semi-cultured landscape by funding grazing, as already mentioned; (2) de-intensification of grassland providing feed for young cattle not in need of energy-rich grass, as is practiced with great success in the Eifel region in western Germany; (3) low-input cropping in regions with less fertile soil; and (4) provision of a sufficient number of structuring elements in highly productive regions. Around

thirteen percent of Germany's agricultural area would be included in such a project, enough to improve substantially the condition of biodiversity. The overall costs are in the range of two thousand million Euros per year, 0.7 per mil (not per cent) of the annual gross national product. A country declaring herself to the Conservation of Biodiversity should be ready to defray this sum, all the more so because it could be affordable by a reorientation of funds already in existence but utilized little efficiently such as the "first pillar" of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union, comprising around five thousand million euro per year.


**Table 7.** Suggestion for a program in favor of conservation in German agriculture.

Source: From Hampicke (2014).

#### **5. Conclusions and Economic Interpretation**

The lamentable condition of biodiversity in Germany's rural landscape violates moral and legal duties. German Law of Nature Protection demands the preservation of all wild species. Not only is the situation at variance with the demands of UN's Sustainable Development Goal 15. Furthermore, National and European programs plead for a reorientation. In 2007, the German Federal Government passed a "National Strategy for Biodiversity" (BMU 2007) whose melodious promises remain on paper ever since. As for agriculture, the "Biodiversity Strategy 2030" of the European Union (European Commission 2020) puts in claim concrete targets, among others: reduction of pesticide use by 50%, reduction of nutrient losses by 50% which demands a reduction of application of 20%, establishment of organic agriculture on 25% of the area, reclaiming high-diversity biotopes on at least 10% of the area.

One is tempted to state that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union has had at its disposal decades in the past to achieve at least some of these goals. Forty years ago, experts gave sufficient advice and presented examples of success (Schumacher 1980). It is easy to demand to dispense with 50% of the pesticide use without wondering about consequences. Doing without 50% of pesticides and leaving everything else unchanged results in confusion. The cropping system as a whole would have to be revised. This is not to say that the targets are not worth aspiring to, but it appears unrealistic to achieve them as soon as 2030, which is in less than ten years.

This contribution shows that considerable improvement is possible even in shorter terms provided there is sufficient political volition. Unnecessary production should cease. The public neither needs energy crops nor excessive export of agricultural commodities, reclaiming three million hectares. Renunciation of both would relieve the stress and open scope for reducing the intensity of cropping and for devoting science and practice to the targets of EU's "Biodiversity Strategy 2030".

A plenitude of agricultural products could be produced, and farmers could enjoy satisfactory incomes—without biodiversity losses witnessed to the present degree. Costs for substantially improving the situation are moderate, funds are available in principle. In a general welfare-economic setting, abandoning uneconomic energy crops even results in avoiding social costs. The general public enjoys beautiful landscapes and regrets biodiversity losses; biotopes as shown in Figure 1 are crowded on weekends by recreationists. Economic studies attest a considerable willingness-to-pay for biodiversity conservation (Meyerhoff et al. 2012).

In the public debate, actors are blamed for being responsible. The government is unwilling to engage in conflicts with farmers, farmers ignore the necessity to conserve, and agricultural lobbyism is too strong, the general public wants cheap food products, and so arguments go on. Although some may be not altogether wrong, they remain superficial.

We have to look for deeper reasons. All agricultural products, some of them supplied in excessive quantity, are commodities, private goods, tradable in the market. All works done in too short supply for the integrity of physical resources and for biodiversity conservation are public goods. A public good is characterized by non-rivalry in consumption and non-excludability. A private good is owned by the one who paid for it in the market. A public good, once it exists, exists for everybody and cannot be traded in the market (we ignore refinements, see Cornes and Sandler 1996).

The provision of private goods can be left to the market which has been functioning extremely successfully for a long time. So the superabundance of agricultural commodities is not surprising. Public goods have to be provided by collective action. Just as the attempt to supply private goods by collective decisions in socialist systems ended up in overall scarcity, the scarcity of benevolent public goods in the countryside is anything but astonishing.

Elementary economic theory attributes the scarcity of public goods to their non-excludability. Smart consumers acting as free riders, there will be no suppliers because they are unable to recover costs. This is half true at best. In fact, there are three possibilities (Hampicke 2013):


Certainly (1) and (2) are not fully absent in society. However, prevailing opinion in the public and numerous results from scientific studies on willingness to pay for nature conservation indicate that (3) is to blame in the first place. Policy does not ignore its duties, considerable funds are granted in the "Second pillar" of the CAP (see Lakner et al. 2021, this volume). However, oddly enough, strange inconsistencies are observed. As for the management of nitrogen and its damage done to water and atmosphere, policy has been timid for decades, farm lobbyism had and partly still has an easy task in preventing more effective measures. The nearly total failure of landscape planning, equally brought about by lobbying, is particularly regrettable. Add to this well-meaning but ill-considered political decisions such as the furthering of energy plants. On the other hand, payments granted to farms for nature-friendly cropping and grassland managing practices—translating the public concern for conservation into practice—after having operated quite successfully in former years, have mostly degenerated to a system dominated by bureaucracy and unjust sanctions frightening off potential participants.

These are subjected to the control of their activities five times as thorough-going as farmers unwilling to participate in conservation measures. Upon minor irregularities, for instance slightly incorrect documentation of the area involved, they have to pay back the funding they received and face other sanctions in addition. It is a small wonder that the number of farms willing to participate is decreasing. It has been shown that most conflicts arising in this field are caused by unclear regulations and ill-informed authorities rather than by unlawfully acting farmers (Kannegießer and Trepmann 2016). Cases are reported where the financial expenditures for controls

exceeded the damage done by mistaken action on the part of farmers almost 60-fold (BfN 2017, p. 34).

Experience shows that farmers are successfully persuaded to cooperate in measures to enhance biodiversity upon two conditions: First, measures must minimize bureaucracy, must recognize the economic necessities of the farm and must be accompanied by the guidance and advice of people in the confidence of farmers. Second, action must be designed long-sighted. Although individual contracts may confine to a couple of years in order to grant flexibility, the general setting demands patience and trust. A case in point is the work done by Wolfgang Schumacher in the Eifel region (west of Bonn) which made his home county (Landkreis Euskirchen) probably the only county in Germany where aspirations of the European Union to stop species reduction have come true. Crop field margins are embellished by weeds no longer in danger of extinction, meadows producing hay for young cattle and other livestock not demanding high-energy feed are colorful (Schumacher 2007).

Society may choose among two alternative designs for agriculture: Either farmers restrict themselves to the maximum production of commodities, thereby regarding limitations protecting natural resources and biodiversity as obstacles for their activity which have to be complied with the least possible. Or they consider the active preservation of the countryside to be part of their business, in a like manner as commodity production, on the condition that a just financial appreciation by society is granted. Unfortunately, the first alternative has gained attraction in recent years, possibly furthered by globalization. Of course, the second alternative is far more promising and would be the optimal way to comply with the demands of SDG 15. To conclude, mismanagement of natural resources and the demise of the traditional countryside are examples of the poor talent of modern societies to design suitable institutions holding trust in public goods.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions and the editorial staff for the language editing and technical assistance.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

AG Energiebilanzen e.V. 2021. Auswertungstabellen 1990–2018. Available online: www.agenergiebilanzen.de/Auswertungstabellen\_1990-2018 (accessed on 1 February 2021). Andreae, Bernd. 1968. *Wirtschaftslehre des Ackerbaus*, 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Ulmer.

Bach, Martin. 2008. Nährstoffüberschüsse in der Landwirtschaft—Ergebnisse und methodische Aspekte. In *Sto*ff*ströme in Flussgebieten*. Edited by Stephan Fuchs, Susanne Fach and Hermann H. Hahn. Karlsruhe: Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie, vol. 128, pp. 65–86.

Berger, Werner. 2011. Leistungen und Kosten zur Hüteschafhaltung mit Stallablammung und Lämmermast im benachteiligten Gebiet. Unpublished work.

Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN). 2016. *Daten zur Natur 2016*. Bonn: Brochure.


© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Ecosystem Restoration and Agriculture— Putting Strong Sustainability into Practice**

**Stefan Zerbe**

#### **1. Introduction**

Although it is undisputed that agriculture is essential for supplying people with food and plant-based resources, today it is one of the most important causes of global environmental problems. The worldwide loss of biodiversity, deforestation, soil erosion, soil salinization, eutrophication of soils and water, and the contamination of soils and water with persistent pesticides are no longer a local problem in agricultural regions but have reached global dimensions (EEA 2016; Tilman et al. 2001; Springmann et al. 2018; IPBES 2019). Along the gradient of extensive towards intensive agriculture, large-scale monocultures in particular, with a high input of fertilizer and pesticides in order to gain maximum yields, are responsible for land degradation and the loss of ecosystem services (Benton et al. 2003; Tscharntke et al. 2005; Olsson et al. 2019).

Ecosystem degradation caused by intensive and unsustainable agriculture is not only a problem for species and habitat conservation and resource protection, respectively, but it can also have significant negative socio-economic impact and is increasingly proven by appropriate studies. For example, Pretty et al. (2003) provided a cost balance for England and Wales on the eutrophication of ecosystems and landscapes, in particular due to intensive agriculture. In their study, they took into account damage to humans and the environment and the associated costs of environmental policy. The costs include, for example, the depreciation of water-related dwellings; the purification of eutrophic water to drinking water quality by the removal of nitrogen, algae toxins, and toxic degradation products; and the depreciation of surface waters for recreation and tourism. Overall, the authors estimate the damage associated with eutrophication of terrestrial and surface waters at 105–160 million USD and the costs of environmental measures and policy, respectively, at 77 million USD per year. The findings of Pretty et al. (2003) indicate the severe effects of nutrient enrichment and eutrophication and that the damage costs are substantial, causing considerable loss of value to many stakeholders in the U.K. Accordingly, the polluters (farmers) do not pay for the damage costs, and these are externalized to society.

Against this background, new approaches in agriculture have to be developed to meet the need for ecological sustainability. The restoration of degraded ecosystems has become a challenge for our societies in the 21st century in order to restore ecosystem services. Walder (2018) rightly states that ecosystem restoration is "one of the most important steps we can take to ensure that people can continue to survive, and thrive, on Planet Earth". In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2021–2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, thus putting restoration on the global environmental agenda.

All approaches in agriculture that meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), introduced by the United Nations (UN 2019), should be considered as potential solutions to the global environmental crisis. Ecosystem restoration, in principle, can directly or indirectly contribute to all 17 SDGs with regard to ecological as well as socioeconomic aspects. However, SDG 15 explicitly addresses ecosystem restoration as it states to "protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss" (UN 2019). In this chapter, agroforestry systems and social agriculture are discussed as an approach for sustainable land use and ecosystem restoration. The geographic focus will be on Central Europe and, in particular, the mountain areas of the European Alps. These approaches will be discussed on the basis of the principles of ecosystem restoration and strong sustainability. They contribute to the restoration of natural as well as financial, human, and social capital, enhance the multifunctionality of landscapes, and might also prevent or reverse the abandonment of traditional cultural landscapes.

#### **2. Ecosystem Restoration and Strong Sustainability**

The international Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) defines ecological restoration as "the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed" (Clewell et al. 2002). This rather broad and unspecific definition was specified by Zerbe et al. (2009) by focusing on the restoration of ecosystem services and structure against the background of the current ecological and socio-economic conditions. As measures are increasingly applied in the name of "ecosystem restoration" that have led to land degradation, such as, for example, controlled burning, topsoil removal, or the application of pesticides, Zerbe and Konrad (2021) calls for ethical standards in the practice of ecosystem restoration.

In order to assist this recovery of degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems or land-use systems, a broad set of measures are applied, which range from doing nothing (i.e., passive restoration; e.g., Prach and Pyšek 2001; Moral et al. 2007; Prach and Hobbs 2008) up to comprehensive technological measures, often adapted from ecological engineering, for example for the restoration of natural river or coast dynamics by opening or removing dykes (e.g., Roman and Burdick 2012) or changing the hydro-morphology of rivers (e.g., Darby and Sear 2008). Restoration measures also comprise well-known agricultural practices (e.g., mowing, grazing) as well as the practice of habitat management for nature conservation purposes (Zerbe 2019a).

Although the concept of sustainability is increasingly watered down and also overused and abused for non-sustainable action (Ott 2010, p. 164, states "linguistic inflation"), it sets a clear guiding principle for global human society with careful reference to definition and content. Leading the way in global and national environmental policy, the term "sustainability" was coined in 1987 by the so-called "Brundtland Commission" for all land uses and land development (Ott 2010). Development is considered sustainable if it "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED 1987). This anchors the principle that people have the right to permanently satisfy their basic needs. Since the environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the idea of sustainable development has been one of the guiding principles of environmental and development policy and has been incorporated into countless documents and statements. As guidance for a global environmental policy, the UN (2019) has formulated 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Following the paradigm that sustainability encompasses the three pillars of ecology, economics, and social affairs ("triple bottom line"), it can be operationalized through capital. Capital, borrowed as an economic term, comprises the physical or natural (e.g., agricultural land), social (e.g., institutions, administrations), human (e.g., education), and knowledge capital (Döring 2004; see also Cirella and Zerbe 2015). Conceptually, a distinction is made between weak and strong sustainability (Neumayer 2003; Daly 2006; Ott and Döring 2007). The main difference between the two concepts lies in the assessment of the substitution possibilities of natural capital. In the concept of strong sustainability, natural capital should be kept constant for future generations (Constant Natural Capital Rule, Costanza and Daly 1992; Daly 1997), whereas in the case of weak sustainability natural capital can, on principle, be indefinitely substituted by other capitals so that utility per capita is not decreasing. With the concept of strong sustainability, natural capital and, thus, also the restoration of ecosystems play particular roles, namely when natural capital can be renewed with the restoration of ecosystems (Aronson et al. 2007; Crossman and Bryan 2009; Gradinaru 2014). For example, Döring (2004) sees investments in natural capital in the restoration of soil fertility, erosion control, the development of near-natural forests, the restoration of fish stocks, the restoration of flowing waters, and the improvement of groundwater quality (see also Döring 2009). Ecosystem restoration, thus, has a direct relation to the sustainable development of nature, environment, and land use and, accordingly, becomes crucial for SDG 15.

#### **3. Combining Tradition with Innovation on Agricultural Land**

From the viewpoint of private benefits, extensive traditional agricultural land-use systems may not be able to compete with intensive agricultural land-use systems (e.g., large-scale monocultures with a high input of fertilizer and pesticides). However, by taking all ecosystem services into account and also by balancing costs and benefits not only on the farm but also on the macroeconomic level (e.g., through externalities, negative impact on natural resources), extensive agriculture might turn out to have more benefits for society than intensive agriculture (cp. Oltmer and Nijkamp 2005; Daujanov et al. 2016). Additionally, the restoration of natural capital on agricultural land contributes to sustainability in the medium and long term.

It has been proven by many studies that, in particular, traditional and extensive agricultural land-use systems in Central Europe contribute largely to the biodiversity of our cultural landscapes (Finck et al. 2017; Zerbe 2019a). Additionally, these land-use systems might contribute positively to the socio-economy of a given region. This has been shown, for example, for the nature conservation area of the Lüneburg Heath, a remnant of the heathland formerly widespread in Northern Germany (Härdtle et al. 2009). Tourism is the strongest economic activity in this particular German lowland region with a gross turnover of 1.2 billion euros, more than 32,000 people employed in tourism, income from tourism of approx. 650 million euros, and more than 5 million overnight stays per year (IHK 2016).

In the following, two approaches in agriculture are suggested that


Thus, agroforestry systems and social agriculture are discussed by focusing on their benefits to nature and society.

#### *3.1. Agroforestry Systems*

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 2015) defines agroforestry systems as "a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos, etc.) are deliberately used on the same land-management units as agricultural crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence". Agroforestry can also be defined as "a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape, diversifies and sustains production for increased social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all levels" (FAO 2015).

Three main types of agroforestry systems can be differentiated:


Agroforestry systems are widespread in the tropics and subtropics, either as traditional types of land use or for intensive agricultural production (e.g., Atangana et al. 2014; Montagnini 2006; Nair and Garrity 2012). However, only relics of traditional land-use systems exist in Central Europe today. For example, extensive orchards are a traditional, multifunctional agroforestry system (Herzog 1998), which is common in the lowlands and the low mountain ranges. Fruit (and timber) is produced on the one hand, and on the other hand it is possible to use the grassland as a meadow or pasture due to the loosely scattered fruit trees (Lucke et al. 1992), often associated with beekeeping (Kornprobst 1994; Traynor 2006). Table 1 shows such traditional agroforestry systems as were once used in Europe. The diverse and multifunctional agroforestry systems in the Mediterranean region that are still used today should not go unmentioned (e.g., Rigueiro-Rodríguez et al. 2009).


#### **Table 1.** Traditional agroforestry systems in Europe (compilation from Zerbe 2019b).

In the Alps in the montane mountain forest belt between about 1000 and 2000 m above sea level, the European larch (*Larix decidua*) occurs in meadows and pastures, thus forming a traditional agroforestry system. This land-use system that has combined agricultural use with timber production on the same area since the Bronze Age (Gobet et al. 2004) is still found today in Switzerland (Burga 1987), in Austria (Blassnig 2012; Tiefenbach et al. 1998), as well as in North Italy in the Provinces of Trento (Giovannini 2017) and South Tyrol (Fontana et al. 2014). Today, they occur in particular in South Tyrol with the largest larch meadow in Europe on the high plateau of the Tschögglberg north of the city of Bolzano (Figure 1). While the grassland is used as a meadow or pasture, the larches with their summer green needle litter contribute to soil improvement, and the trees can be used as timber. The larch, together with the common yew (*Taxus baccata*), yields the heaviest and hardest timber (Grosser and

Ehmcke 2012). Due to the weather resistance of larch wood, it is an important timber for construction in the mountain areas of the Alps. Larch resin has traditionally been used to make turpentine as a component of folk and veterinary medicine. Larch oil is used today in paints and adhesives and for the production of cosmetic products. The overall ecosystem services of these larch meadows and pastures are given in Table 2. of two divergent developments (Fontana et al. 2013; Nagler et al. 2015). On the one hand, farmers intensify land use by cutting the larch trees and transform the agroforestry system into a high-input grassland; on the other hand, the extensive agroforestry system is abandoned. As soon as its abandoned, natural succession leads to the development of a forest with a subsequent loss of biodiversity (Pornaro et al. 2013).

Today, this traditional land-use system of larch meadow/pasture is under threat

meadows and pastures are given in Table 2.

Age (Gobet et al. 2004) is still found today in Switzerland (Burga 1987), in Austria (Blassnig 2012; Tiefenbach et al. 1998), as well as in North Italy in the Provinces of Trento (Giovannini 2017) and South Tyrol (Fontana et al. 2014). Today, they occur in particular in South Tyrol with the largest larch meadow in Europe on the high plateau of the Tschögglberg north of the city of Bolzano (Figure 1). While the grassland is used as a meadow or pasture, the larches with their summer green needle litter contribute to soil improvement, and the trees can be used as timber. The larch, together with the common yew (*Taxus baccata*), yields the heaviest and hardest timber (Grosser and Ehmcke 2012). Due to the weather resistance of larch wood, it is an important timber for construction in the mountain areas of the Alps. Larch resin has traditionally been used to make turpentine as a component of folk and veterinary medicine. Larch oil is used today in paints and adhesives and for the production of cosmetic products. The overall ecosystem services of these larch

**Figure 1.** Larch meadow or pasture on the Tschögglberg near the village of Jenesien in South Tyrol in the spring (Zerbe 2019b). **Figure 1.** Larch meadow or pasture on the Tschögglberg near the village of Jenesien in South Tyrol in the spring (Zerbe 2019b).

**Table 2.** Ecosystem services of larch meadows and pastures (Zerbe 2019b with categorization of ecosystem services according to MEA 2005).


Today, this traditional land-use system of larch meadow/pasture is under threat of two divergent developments (Fontana et al. 2013; Nagler et al. 2015). On the one hand, farmers intensify land use by cutting the larch trees and transform the agroforestry system into a high-input grassland; on the other hand, the extensive agroforestry system is abandoned. As soon as its abandoned, natural succession leads to the development of a forest with a subsequent loss of biodiversity (Pornaro et al. 2013).

#### *3.2. Social Agriculture*

Social agriculture, also known as Social Farming, Green Care, or Care Farming, means all agricultural practices aimed at promoting the rehabilitation, education, health, and integration of various target groups such as, for example, children, elderly people, disabled people, former prisoners, and migrants; this includes pedagogical and nursing services in rural areas, especially for infants and seniors (Di Iacovo and O'Connor 2009; Limbrunner and van Elsen 2013). Historically, farms have always used agricultural labor as an instrument of solidarity, self-support, and social inclusion by providing work for family members of all generations and also including family members with physical or mental disabilities into everyday farm life. Accordingly, social agriculture is a traditional agro-social concept (Di Iacovo and O'Connor 2009), which today is revitalized or institutionalized under different socio-economic conditions (European Communities 2010).

Today, social agriculture is performed by multifunctional agricultural and/or forestry or horticultural enterprises, social cooperatives, or facilities of the public sector that enable people with special needs to develop their own skills and abilities through working with plants, animals, and nature (Di Iacovo et al. 2014; García-Llorente et al. 2016; Nicli et al. 2020). With this kind of cooperation, crafts and social skills should be gained or a recovery process supported. Accordingly, the added value of social agriculture lies not only in the generation of jobs, agricultural production, and health services, but in particular in social inclusion, prevention, education, and improving the quality of life (Di Iacovo and O'Connor 2009; Wiesinger et al. 2013).

Within an interdisciplinary research project on social agriculture in the Southern Alps and adjacent regions, a survey of 22 farms was conducted (Nicli et al. 2020). Semi-structured interviews were carried out to explore whether and how the practice of social farming also met ecological sustainability. We found that all initiatives of social agriculture met the hereby applied criteria for ecological sustainability: (1) organic or ecological farming; (2) activities for nature, resource, and/or cultural landscape protection; and (3) education for sustainable development

and environmental education, respectively (Table 3). Those farms which met all three criteria can be considered as best practice for eco-social farming such as, for example, Terre Altre, La Capra Felice, La Pachamama, Santer Farm, and Peintner Farm.

**Table 3.** Engagement of 22 initiatives of social agriculture, studied in the Southern Alps and adjacent regions, for nature, environmental, and resource protection, respectively; criteria applied are (1) organic or ecological farming; (2) activities for nature, resource and/or cultural landscape protection; and (3) education for sustainable development and environmental education, respectively (based on data from Nicli et al. 2020).



**Table 3.** *Cont.*

<sup>1</sup> pt = partly biological, which means not all members are certified organic farms.

#### **4. Discussion**

Additional to the overall benefits for society and the manifold ecosystem services they provide, agroforestry systems and social agriculture can considerably contribute to ecosystem restoration. When taking the whole range of ecosystem services into account, these approaches might have a better cost–benefit balance than conventional agricultural systems. For the example of larch meadows in the Alps, two currently occurring developments, the intensification as well as abandonment of larch meadows, were compared. These divergent developments were compared, with respect to their ecosystem services, with existing larch meadows on the basis of interviews with actors and experts and with the help of a multicriteria decision analysis (Fontana et al. 2013). In terms of production services, forest development was ranked highest. Nevertheless, the larch meadows were ranked highest in terms of their cultural and historical importance, biodiversity, aesthetics, and their regulatory capacities (e.g., carbon storage, water balance). In general, traditional agroforestry systems seem to provide, from a qualitative point of view, more ecosystem services than pure

agricultural or forestry systems (Figure 2; see also Jose 2009; Schroth et al. 2004). The FAO (2015) highlights the advantages of multifunctional agroforestry systems, which diversify land use, bring social, economic, and nature conservation benefits, and promote sustainable regional development. Accordingly, the restoration of these systems becomes an option for land-use development as well as implementation of the SDGs and, in particular, SDG 15.

Up to now, there have been numerous successful examples from Central Europe and the Alps, which show that the preservation or restoration of traditional land-use systems such as orchards (e.g., Seehofer et al. 2014), heathlands (e.g., Keienburg and Prüter 2006), extensive grasslands (Jedicke et al. 2010), and traditional alpine farming (Blaschka 2015) can combine the objectives of environmental protection as well as the conservation of the cultural landscape with those of sustainable regional development to benefit local communities. Financial support for these initiatives is provided on various levels, from regional towards national and international (e.g., from the European Union) levels (see compilation by Zerbe 2019a).

Our survey of social agriculture in the Alps and adjacent regions has shown that offering social services by farms is also related to responsibility and engagement in environmental services. Accordingly, the investigated farms performed organic or biological agriculture, preserved manifold traditional varieties of agricultural crops, provided environmental education for various groups of people, contributed to management of the traditional cultural landscape, and promoted the diversity of species and habitats on their agricultural land. Some of these initiatives are also actively involved in ecosystem restoration projects (Table 3). Consequently, social agriculture becomes eco-social agriculture (Nicli et al. 2020).

In order to further develop the potential of eco-social agriculture from nature conservation as well as ecosystem restoration perspectives, cooperation between these initiatives (e.g., farms, farm associations, social enterprises) and regional and national agencies for nature conservation has to be promoted. For example, programs for the provision of social services could be linked with those for nature, environmental, and cultural landscape protection. Additionally, cooperation between local, regional, and national institutions must be strengthened by respective policy framework and funding opportunities. The European Union offers a wide range of subsidies (e.g., with the LIFE Program for Environmental Protection, Conservation and Climate Projects (van Elsen and Götz 2000), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Agricultural Fund for Rural Development 2014–2020 (EAFRD), and of the European Social Fund (ESF; RRN 2017)).

The Man and Biosphere Program, which was launched by UNESCO in 1971, is an intergovernmental scientific program that aims to establish a scientific basis for enhancing the relationship between people and their environments (UNESCO 2019). This program wants to improve human livelihood and safeguard natural and managed ecosystems. Accordingly, biosphere reserves all over the world can be considered as "real-world laboratories" (Zerbe et al. 2020) promoting innovative approaches to economic development that are socially and culturally appropriate and environmentally sustainable.

Case studies of agroforestry systems and social farming initiatives in the Alps and adjacent regions (Tables 2 and 3) should be considered as local contributions of agriculture to a global goal. Worldwide, agricultural lands constitute the largest "anthropogenic biome" (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008), occupying one-third of the global ice-free land area (Ramankutty et al. 2008). Agriculture is a major livelihood for 40% of the world's population. Twenty-five years ago, Daily (1995) stated that around 45% of the terrestrial land surface has a reduced capacity due to non-sustainable land use in the past. With ongoing forest clearing for agricultural land use, in particular in tropical countries, and continuous worldwide biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019) and increasing desertification (Mirzabaev et al. 2019), this situation has not become better in recent decades. Accordingly, agriculture plays a major role in contributing to the

SDG 15. Zerbe (2019a) has shown for the large variety of Central European land-use systems how restoration can be put into practice, comprising grassland, wetlands, forests, arable fields, heathland, rivers and lakes as well as urban environments.

#### **5. Conclusion**

The restoration of degraded agricultural land is a worldwide challenge and has to be strongly put forward in the next decade. Those approaches are promising from which the environment as well as the socio-economic systems will benefit. Agroforestry systems and eco-social agriculture are highlighted here because they can meet several objectives of sustainable land use and particularly the SDG 15:


**Conflicts of Interest:** The author Stefan Zerbe declares no conflicts of interest.

#### **References**


© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **Forest Landscape Restoration and Sustainable Biomass Utilization in Central Asia**

**Niels Thevs**

#### **1. Introduction**

Land use and land degradation are cross cutting issues related to and impacted by many SDGs, like SDG 1 (no poverty), SDG 2 (ending hunger), SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production), SDG 13 (climate action), and in particular SDG 15 (life on land) with all its targets. SDG 15 is to protect, restore and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss (UN 2015).

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) has been developed as an approach to restore forests and whole landscapes that interact with forests (Maginnis and Jackson 2005; Mansourian et al. 2005). In the meantime, FLR has become an approach that addresses a wide range of landscapes beyond forests as woodlands and includes restoration approaches like agroforestry (Stanturf et al. 2019). Despite its wide range, Veldman (2015) argues that trees must not dominate restoration approaches, e.g., in grassy landscapes that never had trees.

Under the Bonn Challenge, FLR has gained global attention in forest rich as well as forest poor countries, like the countries in Central Asia. Globally, countries have committed themselves to implement FLR on 350 million ha by 2030 (Bonn Challenge 2021).

FLR, as other restoration efforts, needs to yield income for the people who engage in this and who are affected, in particular for rural communities in poor countries (Stanturf et al. 2019). This is often a challenge, but could be an option as well, as trees do yield biomass, which is a raw material for bioeconomy.

Bioeconomy, if seen solely as the production of renewable biological resources as basis for food, feed, bio-based products, and bio-energy, will not meet the targets of SDG 15 (Heimann 2019). Heimann (2019) analyzed the effects of bioeconomy and so-called sustainable bioeconomy on SDG 15 and found that only sustainable bioeconomy will help in fulfilling SDG 15, while bioeconomy will negatively impact SDG 15. Bioeconomy may allow one to clear forests or other natural ecosystems in

favor of intensive biomass production, which is in contradiction to SDG 15.2, which calls for the restoration and protection of forests, and to SDG 15.5, which calls to halt loss of biodiversity and reduce the degradation of natural habitats. Sustainable bioeconomy according to the Global Bioeconomy Summit (2015) optimizes the production and utilization of biological resources, while ensuring food security and protecting ecosystems.

Martinez de Arano et al. (2018) compiled the potentials of ligno-cellulose biomass from forests in southern Europe as feed stock for a wide range of bioeconomy value chains, which does not compete with food production. The applications for that biomass listed there range from bioenergy over textiles (viscose), sugars as chemical building blocks, and lignin, to produce carbon fibers to engineered wood products and house construction.

Central Asia is a region that, after a period of severe land degradation, has recently joined the Bonn Challenge, visible by the Astana Resolution from 2018 (Bonn Challenge 2018) and pledged a total of 2,389,000 ha by today (Bonn Challenge 2021). Like other regions of the world, Central Asia also faces the need to allocate resources to FLR and to generate income in line with FLR to fulfill these pledges. This is a burden and an opportunity at the same time, because this region has space to offer the FLR as well as the bioeconomy. On the other side, Central Asia harbors a large share of the world's winter-cold deserts and is the region with the highest number of closed river basins worldwide. The most well-known of those river basins is the Aral Sea Basin due to the desiccation of that lake. This semi-arid to arid climate adds another obstacle against FLR. Against this background, this chapter will introduce the needs for restoration and protection of landscapes, of FLR and beyond, and introduce examples for biomass utilization as bioeconomy feedstocks that help restore landscapes. These approaches from a vast dryland region as Central Asia may inspire FLR in other dryland regions of the world.

#### **2. Land Degradation across Central Asia**

#### *2.1. Central Asia—Geography, Climate, Landscapes*

Central Asia, roughly speaking, refers to the land mass stretching from the Caspian Sea in the west into Northwest China and Mongolia in the east, between Siberia in the north and Afghanistan in the south. The boundaries of this region differ from author to author, but all sources include the five countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which share a common history of the Soviet Union, in Central Asia. This chapter, therefore, will refer to those five countries (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Map of the five Central Asian countries with major waters and elevation. Source: Figure by author.

In terms of area, Central Asia is largely dominated by plains and undulating steppe and desert landscapes on an elevation of below 1000 m above sea level (a.s.l.), which cover most of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The southeastern part of that region is dominated by mountains, the Tianshan and Pamirs in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Very small parts of those mountain ranges are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In addition, Kazakhstan shares the Altay Mountains with Russia, Mongolia, and China (ADB 2010).

The climate throughout the region is continental, with cold to very cold winters and warm to hot summers. Average January temperatures are as low as −16 ◦C in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan's capital, −2.6 ◦C in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), 1.9 ◦C in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), and 4 ◦C in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe. Corresponding average July temperatures are 20 ◦C, 24.9 ◦C, 27.8 ◦C, and 27 ◦C in Nur-Sultan, Bishkek, Tashkent, and Dushanbe, respectively (Weatherbase 2020). Due to the location far away from any ocean, the climate is semi-arid to arid with an annual precipitation of, e.g., 140 mm in Balkhash at Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan, 145 mm in Aralsk, close to the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, and 130 mm in Turkmenabad (Turkmenistan). Precipitation increases in the forelands of the mountains, as illustrated by the annual precipitation of Bishkek, Tashkent, and Dushanbe with 452 mm, 440 mm, and 530 mm, respectively (Weatherbase 2020), and more so in the mountains, with places with annual precipitations of around 1000 mm, e.g., in the mountains northeast of the

Ferghana Valley (ADB 2010; Sakbaeva et al. 2013) and more than 1800 mm in Central Tajikistan (Djumaboev et al. 2020). The precipitation maximum falls in the months March, April, and May for most of the region, e.g., in Bishkek, 40% of the annual precipitation occurs in these three months.

The area outside the mountains is largely covered by zonal vegetation types, which are, from north to south, forest steppe, steppe, dry steppe/semi desert, and desert. The steppes are located in Kazakhstan, whereas Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are largely covered by deserts. Thereby, it is noteworthy that the deserts of the region, being winter-cold deserts, harbor shrubby vegetation mainly from White Saxaul (*Haloxylon persicum*), *Artemisia* spec., and *Salsola* spec. Many plant species have adapted to use the soil moisture from snow melt and rain fall in spring and finish their annual life cycle in early summer when the soil moisture has been exploited. Woody species are psammophytes and survive the arid conditions in the desert by developing deep roots to exploit a large soil volume for water (Rachkovskaya et al. 2003).

In the mountains and their forelands, the vegetation zones along with increasing elevation are generally: submontane steppes, broad-leaf forests, Coniferous forests (montane forests), alpine shrubs and meadows, and rocks, snowfields, and glaciers. Forests are mainly distributed on northeast, north, and northwest exposed slopes, because other slopes are too dry for tree growth (Orozumbekov et al. 2009). Of course, the spatial pattern of these zones differs according to local climatic conditions, in particular the absence or presence of forests and their vegetation coverage and species composition. The plant species of the submontane steppe behave like the plants in the steppes with regard to water and finish their life cycle early in summer, while the tree species of the mountain forests need a rather continuous water supply over the whole year.

In Tianshan, the coniferous forest zone lies between 1700 m and 3200 m a.s.l. (Scheuber et al. 2000), with *Picea schrenkiana* being distributed from 1700 m to 2800 m a.s.l. and *Juniper* species up to 3200 m a.s.l. Broad leaf forests in Central Asia, except for the Altay and northern part of Kazakhstan, are walnut wild fruit forests or pistachio forests. The former consists of walnuts (*Juglans regia*) and wild fruit trees of the Rosaceae family, i.e., apple (*Malus kirghisorum* and *M. sieversii)*, pear, plum (*Prunus sogdiana*), cherry (*Prunus mahaleb*), peach, and apricot. In the mountains northeast of the Ferghana Valley, these forests form large areas on an elevation from 700 m to 1100 m a.s.l. (Scheuber et al. 2000; Beer et al. 2008). The largest parts of these forests are located in Kyrgyzstan, though small parts are also located in the Chatkal Mountain Range, which is the Uzbek part of the Tianshan northeast of Tashkent. Such walnut wild fruit forests also occur in the Pamirs in Tajikistan, though on

higher elevations compared to Tianshan. Pistachio is distributed in lower elevations, below the walnut wild fruit forests (USAID 2001a). In northern Kazakhstan, Aspen and Birch form small forests in a mosaic with steppes in the forest-steppe zone (USAID 2001b).

In the mountains, the precipitation feeds numerous rivers, either directly from rain fall or through snow and glacier melt water. All those rivers, except for the Irtysh River in Kazakhstan, drain into endorheic river basins, i.e., these rivers do not reach the open sea, but end in an end-lake, an inland delta, or simply vanish in one of the deserts. The Amu Darya and Syr Darya are the largest rivers of the region and drain into the Aral Sea (ADB 2010; Djumaboev et al. 2020). The Ili River, with its headwaters in China, drains into Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan, which today has become the largest lake of Central Asia after the Aral Sea has been desiccating and shrinking (Imentai et al. 2015). The Chui River and Talas River, both shared between Kyrgyzstan upstream and Kazakhstan downstream, each form an inland delta in the Muyinkum Desert in southern Kazakhstan (ADB 2010). Along those rivers, riparian forests and woodlands (Tugai forests) Willow species, *Populus pruinosa*, *Populus euphratica*, Russian Olive (*Elaeagnus angustifolia*), and Black Saxaul (*Haloxylon aphyllum*), as well as wetlands with Common Reed (*Phragmites australis*), form an azonal vegetation (Rachkovskaya et al. 2003). The plant species of the Tugai forests survive the arid climate by exploiting the groundwater (so-called phreatophytes) so that these plant species remain productive during the whole growing season. The wetland plant species depend on high groundwater levels or surface waters to survive. The Tugai forests and wetlands are the most productive natural vegetation types across the whole region of Central Asia (Thevs et al. 2012a). Despite its semi-arid to arid climate, wetlands are significant in that region, as Kazakhstan alone harbors about 2 million ha of reed beds out of 10 million ha globally, which makes it the country with the largest reed bed area (Köbbing et al. 2013) worldwide.

#### *2.2. Land Degradation across Central Asia*

Most of Central Asia's population concentrates along the rivers and in the river valleys because there is enough water available for irrigation in agriculture and other human water uses. Therefore, already early in history, Tugai forests and wetlands were reclaimed to give space to cropland and settlements. Though most of the land degradation, the results of which we see today, took place during the past 100 years, which is during Soviet Union times and after the independence of the Central Asian countries (UNECE/FAO 2019). Today, the degraded area ranges from

8% of the total land area for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to 60% across Kazakhstan (Mirzabaev et al. 2020).

Starting in the 1960s, huge areas in Central Asia were reclaimed for agriculture. Along the rivers, mainly along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, irrigated agriculture was expanded for cotton production. After independence, land under irrigation in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan was further enlarged as wheat production added to cotton to feed the countries' populations. Along the enlarged areas, water abstraction for irrigation increased, which resulted in the desiccation the Aral Sea and degradation of Tugai forests and wetlands. Large areas of irrigated cropland have been degraded by soil salinization.

In the steppe regions of Kazakhstan, from 1954 to 1970, a total of 20.9 million ha of steppe vegetation was converted into cropland, mainly for wheat production, which resulted in humus loss. Due to low yields, many of these areas were not competitive under the market economy after independence and fell fallow. From 1992 to 1998, 19.6 million ha of that cropland was abandoned (Lenk 2005). Today, such reclaimed areas in northern Kazakhstan are cultivated again (Kraemer et al. 2015).

During Soviet Union times, large areas of forests were cleared or degraded, e.g., forest cover in Tajikistan shrunk from 16–18% of the country's surface 100 years ago (USAID 2001c) to 2.9% today (FAO 2015), mainly due to conversion into cropland. In Turkmenistan, from the former Saxaul forest and woodland area less than one third remains today. In Uzbekistan, 81% of the Saxaul forests and woodlands disappeared (Thevs et al. 2013). Saxaul forests and woodlands were logged for fuel and overgrazed. Tugai forests were cleared as well, to give space to irrigated agriculture. The more irrigation took place and the more water was abstracted from rivers, the less water remained for Tugai forests, wetlands, and water bodies. The desiccation of the Aral Sea is the largest example of this cascade of degradation. From the first half of the 20th century until today, 90% of the former Tugai forests vanished in Uzbekistan (USAID 2001a).

During Soviet Union time, Central Asia imported timber and energy sources (coal, oil, gas, electricity) from the Russian SSR. With the independence of the five countries, these imports came to an abrupt end, which resulted in a surge of forest and other landscape degradation. As wood became the main energy source, in particular for rural communities, fuelwood removal was the major driver of forest degradation after independence. Later, during the 1990s, overgrazing and tree cutting for timber became drivers of forest degradation. Today, fuelwood demand does not impact forests in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, where gas supply has been substantially improved. In Kyrgyzstan, rural communities use more and more coal

and electricity so that the share of fuelwood in the energy mix decreases. Tree cutting for timber and grazing still remain as drivers of forest degradation. Low river runoffs result in water stress for Tugai forests and wetlands and add to their degradation (UNECE/FAO 2019).

Today, 70% of the territory of Kazakhstan is considered degraded to varying extents (UNDP 2015a). Most of those degraded areas are deserts, steppes, and agricultural land and are affected by overgrazing and salinization.

#### **3. Options for Forest Landscape Restoration and Biomass Utilization**

#### *3.1. The Need for Restoration and Income Generation and a Focus on Biomass Utilization*

From the previous section, it has to be concluded that there is a need for restoration across all landscape and vegetation types of Central Asia, and non-degraded landscapes must be protected from degradation. First of all, landscapes along the rivers and river valleys have to be protected and restored, as most of the population in Central Asia concentrates along rivers and in river valleys. Following the river course from its headwaters downstream, alpine meadows and mountain forests have to be protected from further degradation and restored to firstly buffer rainfall and snowmelt in the mountains, which regulates the river runoff and dampens flood events and secondly combat soil erosion and landslides. Landslides pose a risk to communities. Ongoing soil erosion and landslides result in siltation of reservoirs and water infrastructure (Havenith et al. 2017).

Further downstream, where rivers flow through the steppes and deserts, productivity in agriculture has to be maintained, as this is the basis for a large share of livelihoods in the Central Asian countries. More than half of Central Asia's population is rural, and agriculture is the largest single employer in the countries (Table 1).

Tugai forests and wetlands need to be restored and protected as well, because they are the most productive ecosystems in the region and provide huge amounts of biomass that, currently, is mainly used as fodder—Tugai forests and wetlands are major pasture lands, in particular in the desert region—but offer more higher-value uses, as described in Section 3.3. Furthermore, these ecosystems are hotspots for biodiversity, as reflected in the list of Ramsar Sites of the Central Asian countries.


**Table 1.** Population (total and rural) and employment in agriculture in the Central Asian countries.

To protect agricultural productivity as well as Tugai forests and wetlands, reliable and sufficient water supply through reliable and sufficient river runoff from upstream is imperative, as agriculture depends on irrigation. In the course of climate change, substantial reductions of river runoff are expected for the second half of this century, resulting in crop yield losses, as summarized by Reyer et al. (2015). Bliss et al. (2014) for example modeled an annual river runoff decrease by 41% for Central Asia. Djumaboev et al. (2020) claim that the melt water contribution to river runoff dropped by 5% in the Amu Darya and by 20% in the Syr Darya. Against this background, water resources have to be shared between upstream and downstream users, and water must not be wasted to sustain productivity throughout river basins.

Large areas of cropland along those rivers have been degraded through improper irrigation which has resulted in soil salinization (Qadir et al. 2018). This process has to be halted, in order not to further reduce the area of land that has access to irrigation infrastructure and therefore can be productive. Beyond soil salinization, soils need to be protected from erosion and loss of humus to maintain soil fertility and water storage capacity.

In the desert areas, the Saxaul vegetation needs particular attention to be restored and protected, as it prevents wind erosion and is able to provide biomass and fodder in those deserts, if sustainably managed.

All Central Asian countries are net importers of wood (Table 2), with Russia being the main source for those imports.


**Table 2.** Net imports of sawnwood [m<sup>3</sup> ], industrial roundwood [m<sup>3</sup> ] (both coniferous), and OSB [m<sup>3</sup> ] and total import value of these three products [million USD] to the Central Asian countries as of 2018 (FAO 2020).

It is claimed that economies need to switch from coal, oil, and gas to renewable biological resources to mitigate climate change. In this shift, biomass will gain an increasing importance as a crucial raw material and the demand for biomass will increase (Global Bioeconomy Summit 2015). The countries in Central Asia should increase their wood and other biomass production, in order not to become more and more dependent on costly imports. The basis for such biomass production, e.g., food crops, fibers, or woody biomass, is functioning and non-degraded landscapes. This calls for large scale efforts to restore landscapes and protect non-degraded landscapes throughout the region Central Asia.

These restoration and protection efforts have to be inclusive and must not displace people or compromise their income opportunities. This is particularly important as most people live in rural communities and agriculture is the largest employer (Table 1). Such restoration and protection efforts must not displace ongoing land uses and water competition must be avoided, but income must be generated from restoration and protection efforts.

As biomass utilization will become more important in a general shift towards bio-economy, restoration as discussed further in this chapter should include trees and shrubs for woody biomass, highly productive annual plants for biomass, and fiber yielding plants. As forest landscape restoration has developed into a widely recognized restoration concept which focusses on trees and shrubs, this concept will be further explored.

#### *3.2. The Political Environment for FLR and Other Landscape Restoration*

There are a number of restoration concepts and approaches that integrate rural communities and their needs. Sustainable land management (SLM) collects a wide range of land use/land management approaches that also address restoration and protection of landscapes (WOCAT 2020). Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is a concept that takes whole landscapes into account and that has received global recognition under the international Bonn Challenge (IUCN 2020a).

"Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is the ongoing process of regaining ecological functionality and enhancing human well-being across deforested or degraded forest landscapes" (IUCN 2020b). Thereby, whole landscapes and not just forests (or areas with forests in the past) are considered for restoration, because forests interact with neighboring land uses and natural ecosystems and because many land uses contain trees (agroforestry). In Central Asia, the concept of FLR comprises a wide range of landscapes, along with the FAO definition of forests, which includes tree stands down to a canopy cover of 10% (FAO 2015). This is also reflected by the pledges made to the Bonn Challenge by Central Asian countries, which amounted to 2,389,000 ha in total (Bonn Challenge 2021). The largest pledge came from Kazakhstan with 1.5 million ha, followed by Uzbekistan with 500,000 ha. Both countries included large areas with Saxaul vegetation into their pledges. The five countries of Central Asia became members of ECCA30 (Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia 30 Million ha Initiative) which aims for FLR on 30 million ha throughout Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia until 2030 (IUCN 2020c).

Eventually, FLR and the pledges to the Bonn Challenge refer to trees or woody vegetation in a wide sense. Therefore, steppes and many wetlands will not fall under FLR and the Bonn Challenge. Due to their size and productivity, these areas have to be included in the restoration and protection of landscapes in Central Asia as well.

The countries in Central Asia have all developed and partly adopted national policy strategies that address the landscape restoration and protection needs outlined earlier, as listed by UNECE/FAO (2019).

Kazakhstan adopted the strategy Kazakhstan-2050 in 2012. Under that strategy, the whole economy of Kazakhstan shall move towards a green economy. Conservation and effective management of ecosystems are two parts of this strategy (UNDP 2015a).

Kyrgyzstan has developed a Green Economy Program 2020–2023, within which reforestation, fast growing tree plantations, and general improvement of soil fertility are core points (Partnership for Action on Green Economy 2019).

In Tajikistan, the State Forestry Agency elaborated a strategy for forest development for 2015 until 2030, as part of the National Development Strategy until 2030. This strategy, among other aims, seeks to plant 1000 ha forests annually, rehabilitating 2000 ha forests annually, and support natural forest regeneration on 8000 ha annually.

The National Forest Program 2013–2020 of Turkmenistan (State Committee of Turkmenistan for Environmental Protection and Land Resources 2018) prioritizes the restoration and afforestation of Saxaul forests, in order to combat erosion of deserts and protect settlements. Next to Saxaul, it promotes planting of shelterbelts.

In the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan of Uzbekistan from 2012 (UNDP 2015b), the target was set to reduce the rate of degradation and fragmentation of the most vulnerable natural ecosystems by 2025. Thereby, the focus was laid on Tugai and Saxaul forests. In the mountain forests, degradation must be halted according to that plan as well. Nut and fruit plantations need to be established on a large scale, in order to offer income opportunities for rural communities and to compensate for degradation in the mountain forests. Around rural communities, woodlots and plantations are to be established to cover the wood demand of those communities.

#### *3.3. Options for Restoration (FLR and Others) and Biomass Utilization*

A huge number of projects were implemented across Central Asia, which included FLR as well as other landscape restorations, e.g., wetlands, as listed in UNECE/FAO (2019). Most projects focused on biodiversity protection and sustainable pasture/livestock management to reduce grazing pressure and allow, among others, forest regeneration, to combat erosion and reduce disaster risk, enlarge forest areas and increase the number of trees. Some projects focused on agroforestry as an FLR approach for agricultural areas. Some projects are coupled with providing alternative energy sources to reduce the pressure by fuel wood removal. When specific straight forward options for income generation were included, these mostly referred to fruits and other high value food products, medicinal plants, or tourism. An example of FLR that straight forwardly addresses income generation is promoting pistachio in lower elevations in mountains of Uzbekistan (Michael Succow Foundation 2014). FLR examples that aim at producing biomass as a raw material for material use have not yet been explored.

Therefore, underneath a number of FLR and other restoration approaches, ongoing and under development are introduced.

#### 3.3.1. Agroforestry

Agroforestry comprises land use systems that integrate trees and shrubs into farming or animal husbandry. Agroforestry has a long tradition across Central Asia with trees integrated into silvo-pastoral systems, fruit trees integrated with crops, vegetables, or fodder, kitchen gardens, and tree wind breaks (Djanibekov et al. 2016). Thereby, tree wind break is the most widespread agroforestry system across the region in terms of area (Thevs et al. 2017a, 2019). In particular, during Soviet Union times, tree wind breaks were promoted and planted across whole Central Asia (e.g., Albenskii et al. 1972; Kort 1988; Thevs et al. 2019). Tree wind breaks, as other agroforestry systems, qualify as an FLR approach (IUCN 2020b), as they provide many benefits to landscapes to improve current and future biological productivity, which are reducing wind speed, thus reducing crop water consumption, acting as snow trap, combating erosion, increasing soil organic matter through leaf litter, and providing habitat for wildlife (Alemu 2016). Tree wind breaks do not displace ongoing land uses, such as food production, but integrate into such land uses.

The most common tree species used for tree wind breaks were poplars (mainly *P. nigra* clones), throughout the region, elm (*Ulmus minor*), in drier areas north of the Tianshan, and mulberry (*Morus alba*), in the Ferghana Valley and other parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

All three tree species have been used as raw material, the former two for timber and fuel wood and the latter for silk production and for the wood. Today, most attention has shifted to poplar as fast growing tree in all countries and to mulberry as raw material for silk production mainly in Uzbekistan. These two tree species therefore offer opportunities to address restoration and provide domestic raw material and income opportunities, with a huge untapped potential for further raw material production as feedstock for bioeconomy.

An assessment of Kyrgyzstan revealed (Thevs and Aliev 2017) that a tree wind break grid of 500 m × 500 m across all cropland of the country would harbor 70 million poplar trees, which would cover most of the country's timber demand and a large share of the fuel wood demand. In this assessment, single row tree wind breaks were considered, as this is the type preferred nowadays by farmers. Still, this type significantly reduces wind speed and reduces agricultural water consumption (Thevs et al. 2019). Such single row tree wind breaks do not occupy much space so that there is very limited impact on ongoing land uses. Poplar wood can be used for a wide range of applications, as listed by Isebrands and Richardson (2014) so that an expansion of tree wind breaks would contribute to the raw material basis as needed for a bio-economy.

Mulberry yields the raw material for silk production as a high value product. Silk production has a history of thousands of years and was also promoted during Soviet Union times. Today, mainly Uzbekistan preserved domestic silk production and plans to modernize it, as was revealed by expert interviews in 2019 (Baier et al. 2019). Like poplars, mulberry trees can be integrated into ongoing land use as tree wind breaks. Furthermore, some mulberry cultivars have a certain salt tolerance so that they can be used as tree wind breaks on saline croplands or to restore areas of saline lands.

In the past three years, paulownia has been gaining increased attention as a fast-growing tree with very good timber properties. The timber is light and shows desirable mechanic properties DIN EN 338:2016-07 (DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V. 2016). Currently, there are three plantations and single tree individuals in Kyrgyzstan, and further plantations are in the planning or establishment stage in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. A group of paulownia trees in Bishkek observed during the growing season 2018 grew from 4.85 m to 7.70 m in height and from DBH of 8.9 cm to 14.6 cm on average (Villwock 2019). Three-year-old trees on the currently largest plantation in Kyrgyzstan, located at Lake Issyk Kul, grew from 2.70 m to 4.40 m in height and from DBH 5 cm to 7.9 cm in average during the year 2019 (Baier 2020). The vegetation period is shorter at Issyk Kul compared to Bishkek. Those trees at Issyk Kul showed a volume increment of 0.01 m<sup>3</sup> per tree compared to 0.004 m<sup>3</sup> volume increment of two-year-old poplars near Bishkek.

Paulownia was reported to have similar effects to poplars when planted as tree wind break, like wind speed reduction by 20–50% and reduction of evapotranspiration of 23–34% compared to open field conditions (Jiang et al. 1994). However, paulownia cannot be used as a tree wind break under very windy climates (Hecker and Weisgerber 2003). Paulownia, in contrast to poplar, cannot endure wet soils (Hecker and Weisgerber 2003). Therefore, Paulownia in combination with crops needs more careful irrigation management, in order to avoid wet soil conditions. Poplars can be easily combined with the widely spread flood or furrow irrigation, as it can endure wet soil conditions.

Whether Paulownia in agroforestry systems should be counted as FLR or not is debatable, as Paulownia is not an indigenous tree of Central Asia, and under humid climate conditions it has been reported as an invasive species. As paulownia needs to be irrigated under the climatic conditions of Central Asia, but cannot endure wet soil conditions, it depends on careful site management, which reduces its opportunities to germinate and recruit outside man-made sites.

Assuming timber yields at least as high as from poplars, paulownia offers similar opportunities to provide biomass as raw material for bio-economy, while providing benefits to landscapes in agroforestry systems and thus not displacing other land uses.

#### 3.3.2. Salt and Water Stress Tolerant Plants for Degraded Croplands and Tugai Forests

Restoration of saline lands with halophytic plants has been implemented in many parts of the world, as e.g., listed by Qadir et al. (2018), including examples for Central Asia. If the resulting biomass is used, it is mainly used as fodder, often with low yields, as restoration is the main focus. Agroforestry was piloted with the tree species *Elaeagnus angustifolia*, *Ulmus pumila*, and *Populus euphratica* on saline degraded lands in Khorezm, Uzbekistan by Lamers et al. (2008). These agroforestry systems were established to yield fodder, fuel wood, and fruits from *Elaeagnus angustifolia.*

Two further promising candidates for restoration of saline lands in river plains are licorice (*Glycyrrhiza glabra*) and Kendir (*Apocynum venetum*). Both plant species are part of the natural vegetation of the river plains and Tugai forests of Central Asia. Both are adapted to the arid climate by tapping the groundwater (phreatophytes) for their water supply. This makes them endure years with low river runoff, as the groundwater layer stores water and acts as a buffer for those plants. Furthermore, both plant species have a certain salt tolerance so that they can be planted on areas which cannot support food production to an economically viable level.

Licorice yields fodder from its leaves, but the higher value biomass are the roots, which are a raw material for medicinal products and for flavors to foods and beverages. As licorice is a nitrogen fixing plant (Fabaceae), it helps improving soil fertility (Kushiev et al. 2005).

Kendir yields bast fibers of a quality similar to cotton and can be harvested as a medicinal plant, which makes it a plant species with the potential to yield high value raw material from places with not many other land use alternatives. Kendir was cultivated until the 1950s in today's Uzbekistan, but abandoned in favor of cotton. Fiber processing after cotton harvest (ginning) is technically easier than the extraction of a bast fiber like Kendir. However after improper irrigation, this has resulted in large areas of saline lands, which do not support high cotton yields anymore. Kendir is salt tolerant, and could be an alternative for those lands, providing a much more valuable raw material than fodder or fuel wood (Thevs et al. 2012b).

#### 3.3.3. Reed as Biomass Source

Central Asia, despite its semi-arid to arid climate, has globally large reed bed areas which yield a huge amount of biomass. Kazakhstan alone harbors 2 million ha of reed beds, followed by Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with several hundred thousand Hectares each (Köbbing et al. 2013). The Ili Delta in Kazakhstan, which is one of the largest reed bed areas of the region, was mapped through remote sensing (Thevs et al. 2017b), which revealed an area of submerged and non-submerged reed of 85,400 ha and 126,378 ha, respectively, with a standing stem biomass of 869,097 t in the submerged reed beds. The resulting average biomass of 10.1 t/ha is in the range of reed biomasses reported for other reed beds across Kazakhstan (Baibagyssov et al. 2020). This allows the conclusion that there is a huge biomass pool that can be tapped as raw material for the bio-economy, even if only a part of that reed is used, in order to give space to biodiversity conservation.

Reed yields a ligno-cellulose biomass, which can be used as raw material for paper, paper board, and OSB boards. A small factory for OSB boards is being built up in the Ili Delta. Cellulose extraction and the subsequent production of sugars and further chemical inputs are under research, as compiled by Schäpe (2016).

#### **4. Conclusions**

Central Asia, despite its arid climate and manyfold land degradation, offers potential for sustainable utilization of biomass as feedstock for different products and value chains under bioeconomy approaches. The options for biomass utilization introduced here avoid or minimize competition with food production. Agroforestry, which includes poplars, mulberry, or paulownia offers timber and silk as high value product. On saline lands, agroforestry offers less valuable products, but still offers options to make use of such lands. Moreover, Kendir and Licorice are plants that yield high value products (fibers, medicine, and flavors) from saline land, which otherwise poses difficulties to grow food crops. Finally, reed in the wetlands of the region yields huge amounts of ligno-cellulose biomass, which can be used as raw material for paper, paper board, and OSB boards. Thereby, the processing of wood and silk as raw materials from agroforestry are well known. The utilization and processing of Kendir and reed though still needs some research to unfold their full potential for high value products.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** Thanks to all colleagues and partners who cooperated in the various projects that elaborated the knowledge digested for this chapter: Ecosystem conservation

and sustainable land use in the Ili-Delta, Balkhash Lake, Kazakhstan, under decreasing water resources, BMBF; Renewable resources without competition to food production, BMBF; Agroforestry systems in irrigated agriculture in Central Asia for building resilience against water stress and climate change, GIZ/BEAF small grant; Nachhaltige Biomassenutzung aus Schilf, BMBF; Travelling Conference Silk Production, BMBF; Poplars in Agroforestry in Central Asia – from Planting Material to Utilization, GIZ/BEAF small grant.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **The Transition to Sustainable Life on Wetlands: How the Sustainable Use of Peatlands Appears on the Political Agenda**

**Stefan Ewert and Susanne Abel**

#### **1. Introduction**

This article deals with the transition to sustainable life in wetlands, a world in the "transitional position between land and water" (Rydin and Jeglum 2013, p. 2). More specifically, we examine peatlands. Peatlands are "the most widespread of all wetland types in the world" (Joosten and Clarke 2002, p. 6). The special characteristic of peatlands explains their importance for sustainability transition: due to a waterlogged, oxygen-poor environment, the rate of decay of dead plants in peatlands is slower than in all other terrestrial ecosystems worldwide (Joosten et al. 2016b, p. 64). Thus, they play a major role in the CO<sup>2</sup> concentrations in the atmosphere. Limpens et al. (Limpens et al. 2008, p. 1381) point out:

Despite covering only 3% of the Earth's land surface, boreal and subarctic peatlands store about 15–30% of the world's soil carbon as peat. [ . . . ] These massive deposits are the legacy of peatlands acting as sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) for millennia, but also illustrate the potential for large CO<sup>2</sup> and methane (CH4) fluxes to the atmosphere if peatlands were to be destabilized by global warming and changes in land use.

Next to carbon storage, peatlands have multiple other values and functions (Joosten and Clarke 2002, pp. 45–100). Wet peatlands are important for biodiversity protection (Minayeva et al. 2017) and they function as "the kidneys of the landscape" in hydrological and chemical cycles (Fraser and Keddy 2005, p. IX). As such, they play an important role in the storage of water and freshwater quality. Furthermore, they have an archive function—peatlands provide information that is "deposited and stored in the peat profile" (Chapman et al. 2003, p. 525). Sustainable land use is only possible if the peat is conserved in wet peatlands, so that the peatland can provide these ecosystem services.

Today, most human activities in wetlands are based on drainage and cause the degradation of peatlands accompanied by high CO<sup>2</sup> emissions and a loss of mires as living peatlands. Amongst others, forestry, peat extraction and urbanization destroy mires worldwide. However, at least in the non-tropical world, agriculture is the main driver for peatland degradation (Joosten and Clarke 2002, p. 33; cf. IPCC 2007). The only sustainable way of using peatlands is paludiculture, land use on wet and rewetted peatlands (Wichtmann et al. 2016). Paludicultures (Latin 'palus' = swamp) are land management techniques that cultivate biomass on peatlands under conditions that maintain the peat body, facilitate peat accumulation and sustain the ecosystem services associated with natural peatlands. A transition from the unsustainable use of drained peatlands to rewetting and use in paludicultures contributes directly to most of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including, amongst others, SDG 6 (clean water), SDG 9 (innovations) und SDG 13 (climate action) (Tanneberger et al. 2020, p. 5). Due to the disproportionately high number of the world's species that live and breed in wetlands, peatland protection is of utmost importance for SDG 15 (life on land) (RAMSAR 2018). Given the fact that agriculture is the main driver for peatland degradation, our article focuses on the question how the agricultural policy can contribute to the transition to sustainable life on (wet-)lands.

For the analysis of political agenda-setting, we focus on the European Union. Europe is one of the world regions with the largest areas of degraded peatlands (Urák et al. 2017). In the EU, agricultural policy is one of the key policies, so that the "EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is arguably the single most important policy instrument in the context of peatland degradation and conservation across the EU" (Peters and von Unger 2017, p. 10).

The analytical framework of our examination is the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) by Kingdon ([1995] 2014)). The MSA is a universal theory and key reference in public policy studies (Cairney and Jones 2016). We use this analytical frame in order to understand the emergence of a new approach to sustainable peatland use in the policy discourse. Based on that, we discuss the chances for a large-scale implementation of paludiculture as a form of wet agriculture on peatlands.

#### **2. Theoretical Background and Expectations**

John Kingdon's Multiple Stream Approach (MSA) provides the analytical frame of our investigation. Kingdon argues that an idea's time comes when a problem stream, a policy stream and a political stream come together and policy entrepreneurs push this idea on the governmental agenda (Kingdon [1995] 2014). Since one of the main criticisms of the MSA is the lack of explicit hypotheses and the possibility of falsification, we use the theoretical refining and adaptations of the MSA by Herweg et al. (2015) and integrate their hypotheses into our analysis of the emergence of paludiculture on the political agenda.

The first stream we consider is the problem stream. This stream answers the question "[w]hen exactly [ . . . ] a problem [is] relevant enough to open policy window" (Herweg et al. 2015, pp. 436–37). According to Kingdon, a problem exists if there is a "mismatch between the observed conditions and one's conception of an ideal state" (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 110). Thus, the value-based definition of an ideal state and the intersubjectively shared observation of a phenomenon determine the definition of a problem and the state of the problem stream. The crucial question is to define when exactly the problem is relevant (enough). Herweg et al. (2015) argue that this is the case when the problem puts the policymakers' re-election at risk. Due to the global dimension of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from drained peatlands, we argue that re-election is less important in this case. Instead of this, we consider the problem stream as ripe if there is not only global awareness of a problem, but legally binding mechanisms to deal with that problem exist on a global level and have an influence on policymaking on the political levels below.

The policy stream comprises the ideas for the specific design of the policy field. Analytically, the MSA takes here all proposals into account which are made to reduce the imbalance between the ideal and observed observations. Kingdon calls these ideas and proposals in sum the "policy primeval soup" (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 19), and they are discussed, selected and adopted in a community of specialists. Usually, a "large set" (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 20) of proposals exists, but, like in a natural selection process, only some ideas survive. Kingdon ([1995] 2014, pp. 131–39) identifies different criteria which determine the success of an idea in the policy stream. These criteria are the technical feasibility, the value acceptability among the specialists in the policy community (including efficiency and cost-effectiveness) and an anticipated positive reaction in the public sphere and among decision makers (cf. Jones et al. 2016, p. 16). The policy stream is ripe "if at least one viable alternative is available" (Herweg et al. 2015, p. 443) to the status quo in order to reduce the mismatch observed in the problem stream.

The third stream in Kingdon's MSA is the political stream. Initially, it flows apart from the work of specialists in the policy stream and the public attention in the problem stream (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 145). To understand the stream and its status, Kingdon argues for the analysis of the public mood, the activities

of organized interests and changes in governmental and administrative structures (Kingdon [1995] 2014, pp. 146–59).

For examining the political stream, we focus on the EU. The implementation of a sustainable use of peatlands is dependent from the political stream on the levels where the political competencies for shaping and steering the policy field are. As outlined in the introduction, the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a crucial policy instrument for peatland protection. The flow of the political stream within political entities led to the criticism of Kingdon's original MSA to be too unprecise with respect to the different political agents. Consequently, the MSA was extended to political parties and their agenda-setting in the light of the position of interest groups and the chances for re-election (Herweg et al. 2015, pp. 438–41). This theoretical refining is convincing for parliamentary systems. However, due to the crucial role of the EU commission and the interest groups in the EU agenda-setting processes (Princen 2011), we focus on the original characteristics pointed out by Kingdon. In order to refine Kingdon's MSA, we adopt the argument of Herweg et al. (2015) with respect to the conditions and argue that a political stream is ripe if the crucial political institutions perceive the alternative proposal as (a) popular among voters, and if (b) powerful interest groups are unlikely to launch campaigns against it and (c) new key personnel are involved in the agenda-setting on an administrative level.

According to Kingdon, a new idea appears on the political agenda if the three streams are ripe and policy entrepreneurs become active. In times of an open policy window, policy entrepreneurs are key actors who soften up the separations between the streams. Policy entrepreneurs are "advocates for proposals" (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 122), and an open policy window gives them the opportunity to promote their policy proposal as a solution to a challenge defined in the problem stream.

#### **3. Materials and Methods**

In the 2000s, the MSA became one of the most prominent approaches to analyze public policy (Zohlnhöfer et al. 2015). The empirical material in Kingdon's work was gathered from expert interviews and the analysis of official documents and academic writing (Kingdon [1995] 2014, pp. 4–5). Like Kingdon in his original work, the majority of the MSA studies use documentary analyses and interview methods (cf. Cairney and Jones 2016, p. 44). This qualitative access has proven itself in order to explore a new object of study. To do so, most authors do some conceptual revisions and adaptations of Kingdon's MSA (Cairney and Jones 2016, pp. 45–46). This is also the case for studies in the field of environmental policy (e.g., Brunner 2008). In our

article, we follow this methodological path and analyze the policy documents of governmental institutions and policy stakeholders (like interest groups) as well as the scientific literature on the sustainable agricultural use of peatlands. To depict the political stream and the policy window, we analyze all documents of the EU institutions on peatland protection of the last 20 years and examined the publications of the stakeholders addressed to the CAP reforms. Additionally, we conducted five interviews in 2019 with staff on the working level of the agricultural ministries in the German federal states, the Bundesländer. The interviews took place in spring 2019. In the five peatland-rich Bundesländer, there is at least one official for peatland protection in the ministries for agriculture and environment. We conducted semi-structured interviews with these officials and analyzed the interviews with qualitative methods. We use the German Bundesländer as a case study for the agenda-setting on a subnational level. The Bundesländer play a central role in the specification and administration of the European CAP (Ewert 2016). For the implementation of the CAP in Germany, the state ministries are crucial institutions.

#### **4. Results**

The MSA is a universal approach in the sense that "policymaking issues that can arise in any time or place" (Cairney and Jones 2016). Due to the global existence of peatlands and the global threat of anthropogenic climate change, the problem stream (Section 4.1) and the policy stream (Section 4.2) also have a global dimension. On the contrary, the political stream flows within political entities. In this stream, policy entrepreneurs in the field of agricultural policy have to be active on different levels, as we demonstrate with the example of the European Union (Section 4.3). We focus on the EU because, on the one hand, the problem of peatland degradation is particularly visible in Europe and, on the other hand, the pressure on the land is high due to high population density (cf. Tanneberger et al. 2020). We show that policy windows regularly open in this policy field, because the CAP functions in seven-year funding periods (Section 4.4). We agree with Brunner (2008) that it is, to some extent, complicated to analyze multi-level game structures with the MSA, but argue that the approach is nevertheless useful to explain the changes in the political agenda concerning sustainable peatland use.

#### *4.1. Problem Stream*

We first analyze the problem stream. Regarding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in general, there is no doubt that this problem stream is ripe. On a global level, the best evidence for this might be the creation of global organizations and

treaties. The foundation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 is only one expression of the problem's recognition (cf. Bodansky 1993). Article 2 sets out the central objective of the convention, the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere". The assessment of the observable conditions for the UNFCCC is one of the main tasks of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Alfsen and Skodvin 1998). The IPCC defines the indicators for GHG inventories (Hiraishi et al. 2014, p. IV) and summarizes the existing data. The IPCC's assessment reports made the mismatch between stable GHG concentrations in the atmosphere (as an "ideal state" in the sense of Kingdon) and the conditions created by human GHG emissions observable. They entered public debates and made clear that climate change is one of the biggest challenges for mankind (Brunner 2008). With the Kyoto protocol, the UNFCCC established a legally binding mechanism to act against climate change on a global level. In terms of the MSA, the problem stream became ripe.

With respect to land use, the IPCC reports pointed out that the agricultural sector is responsible for a substantial part of human GHG emissions (IPCC 2007). The reports already made clear in 2007 that the decay of peat on organic soils drained for agricultural activities is a large CO<sup>2</sup> source (IPCC 2007, p. 36). Subsequently, however, it became clear that the IPCC reporting guidance for the national GHG inventories regarding drained peat soils underestimated the GHG emissions substantially (Couwenberg 2011). While living peatlands under natural, wet conditions are a net carbon sink, drained peatlands are a huge carbon source (Joosten et al. 2016b) and while the peatlands of the world are still the largest terrestrial store of organic carbon (Joosten et al. 2016b, p. 63), agriculture and forestry are the main drivers for the drainage of peatlands (Oleszczuk et al. 2008). Different research activities made the dimension of the problem observable. Joosten et al. (2012, p. C) summarized this research and clarified:

Fifteen percent of peatlands [=0.45 percent of the Earth's land surface, S.E./S.A.] are drained and used for agriculture, grazing, peat mining and forestry, especially for bioenergy plantations. Including emissions from peat fires, these drained peatlands emit almost six percent of anthropogenic CO<sup>2</sup> emissions. This represents almost 25 percent of emissions from the entire land use, land use change and forestry sector.

Based on this research, the IPCC reviewed the guidelines for reporting GHG emissions from peat soils (Hiraishi et al. 2014). It became obvious that a large mismatch between land use on drained peatlands and the aim of a sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems exists. The problem was recognized and expressed in

figures and it was given scientific and public attention. The Kyoto protocol, which initially did not systematically take the role of peatlands into account, made several adjustments in later commitment periods (Joosten et al. 2016a). In general, the key issue of the discourse on sustainable peatland use is the general challenge of climate change mitigation. Climatic drying and drainage also increase the risk of peat fires that are a further source of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, as well as causing negative human health and socio-economic impacts (Page and Baird 2016). Wet peatlands are also important for climate change adaptation because of their resilience to gradual, long-term changes in climate and hydrological conditions, but they also respond rapidly to more profound, short-term anthropogenic disturbances (Page and Baird 2016). Drainage of peatlands leads to subsidence. As a result, some areas of peatland formerly drained for agriculture have now been abandoned or put to other land uses. Subsidence leads to high risk of flooding in coastal areas, decreasing agricultural productivity, leading to increased costs for drainage and the reconstruction of infrastructure or developments. With the amendments in the Kyoto protocol, these scientific findings formed the problem stream on a global level.

On an EU level, the current legal framework for the agricultural policy is provided by regulation No 1307 from the year 2013. The problem of the GHG emissions from drained peatlands is not named in the regulation. However, in the present reform discussion of the CAP on a European level, this issue plays an important role (see Section 4.4). In Germany, all current coalition agreements in the peatland-rich Bundesländer mention the need to protect and rewet the peatlands in order to implement GHG emission targets (Ewert and Hartung 2020). Our interviews with the agricultural ministries demonstrate that the Bundesländer have been trying to get the federal ministry of Germany to name the problem and possible solutions in the coming European CAP period (Interview No 1, No 2, No 4 and No 5).

#### *4.2. Policy Stream*

For the examination of the policy stream, we analyze the literature regarding the alternatives to the unsustainable use of drained peatlands. Within the policy community, there is a consensus that intact mires and bogs are—among other ecosystem services—large carbon stores (Yu et al. 2010; Crump 2017). With regard to the rewetting of drained peatlands, there is a scientific debate on the opposing effects of CO<sup>2</sup> storage and increasing methane (CH4) emissions. Current research demonstrates that, due to different radiative effects and atmospheric lifetimes of both gases, prompt rewetting has the highest climate change mitigation potential (Günther et al. 2020). However, restoration by rewetting comes into conflict with the

existing forms of agricultural and forestry uses of peatlands (Chapman et al. 2003). These conflicts called for a new approach to the wise and sustainable use of peatlands (Joosten and Clarke 2002).

The sustainable productive use of wet peatlands has—on the one hand—a long tradition. One example is the use of reed for construction and roofing. On the other hand, a systematic approach to use peatlands in a way that peat accumulation maintains or starts again is a rather new concept. It is called paludiculture (Latin 'palus': swamp) and defined as "the cultivation of biomass on wet and rewetted peatlands" (Wichtmann and Joosten 2007, p. 24). Since the beginning of the 2000s, the concept has been developed, tested in pilot projects and introduced into scientific discourse (for an overview e.g., Wichtmann et al. 2016; Joosten et al. 2014; Wichtmann and Joosten 2007). This made paludiculture, as an alternative to the unsustainable use of drained peatlands, visible. However, is this policy stream already ripe? To evaluate this, we look at the criteria defined by Kingdon for the success of an idea in the policy stream.

#### 4.2.1. Technical Feasibility

According to Kingdon, a proposal is technically feasible if it is "worked out" and "ready to go" (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 131). For paludiculture, the first step is to identify suitable crops. The 'Database of Potential Paludiculture Plants' (DPPP)<sup>1</sup> , records the results of pilot projects, etc., and identifies more than one thousand potential plants worldwide (cf. Abel et al. 2013). Based on this, different questions of production, harvesting and utilization have to be analyzed. Several pilot projects and practice examples demonstrate the feasibility of paludiculture (Wichtmann et al. 2016, pp. 21–78). Amongst others, the use of fen biomass in the district heating plant of Malchin from 400 ha of rewetted peatland (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany) (Dahms et al. 2012) or the cultivation and use of *Sphagnum* (peat moss) biomass as a substitute for peat in horticulture on 17 ha on a former bog grassland (Gaudig et al. 2018) (see Figure 1). Another example arewater buffalos grazing on around 300 ha of wet or rewetted peatlands (Sweers et al. 2014). The examples were scientifically monitored and the results show that the plant establishment, wet management, harvest and biomass utilization for different value chains (e.g., as fuel, substrate or meat) are feasible on a large scale. The use of wet meadows for hay production or reed cutting for thatching are

<sup>1</sup> The DPPP is available online: https://www.greifswaldmoor.de/dppp-109.html.

traditional examples of paludiculture. With modern harvesting techniques, they have developed into a good source of income and have enabled the application of nature conservation measures.

**Figure 1.** (**left**) Peat moss harvest on rewetted bog grassland in NW Germany; (**right**) wet meadow harvest; Source: Greifswald Mire Centre, used with permission.

#### 4.2.2. Value Acceptability

1

Kingdon argues that a proposal has to be in line with the values of the specialists in a policy community (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 132). Regarding the question of the introduction of paludiculture on organic soils that are currently used for conventional agriculture, the policy community consists of a lot of different agricultural stakeholders. The conventional agriculture on peatlands is based on drainage, agriculture has a 'semi-desert' origin and heritage (Joosten 2014; Joosten et al. 2014). However, in the current discussion on a CAP reform in Europe, COPA-COGECA—as the union of farmers' organizations and a highly influential interest group on a European level—endorses the introduction of paludiculture as an appropriate way to protect peatlands (Copa and Cogeca 2019). Our interviews with representatives of the agricultural ministries in the German Bundesländer confirm that the farmer associations do not oppose the introduction of paludiculture.

Within the topic of value acceptability, the question of the efficiency of the new approach is highly relevant (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 136). Within the agricultural sector, with its high level of subsidies worldwide, this question matters maybe even more. Economic studies point out that paludiculture crops can be competitive to other agricultural products, if the entitlement to agricultural subsidies is equal to conventional farming (Wichmann 2017). However, in the European Union, this is not the case. While farmers receive subsidies for drained peatland agriculture, they do not for most of the paludicultures (Joosten et al. 2014, p. 303). The question of the income of paludiculture farming—especially in comparison to farming on

drained peatlands—is crucial for its acceptability among farmers. A large-scale implementation of paludiculture could only take place if the income (incl. subsidies) is at least as high as for conventional farming on peatlands.

#### 4.2.3. Anticipated Reaction in the Public Sphere

One can find a lot of examples of the mires' perception as hostile and threatening in different cultures. As Ludwig Fischer has shown for the case of Germany, the discovery of the mire in art and literature in the 19th century was closely connected with the conquer of the mire, and with its scary and hostile nature being transformed by civilization (Fischer 2009). Thus, rewetting projects are often confronted with acceptance problems among local people (Pfadenhauer and Grootjans 1999). Rewetting is perceived as a break with traditions, also because of the great efforts that have been made to drain and reclaim the land for food security, electrification or wealth in general (e.g., Deickert and Piegsa 2016; Varkkey and O'Reilly 2019). People also fear the rising water levels because of wet basements and mosquitos. However, one might expect that the anticipated reaction in the local public sphere is considerably better when the rewetting is connected with an ongoing productive use of the peatland via paludiculture and an awareness of the problems of drainage-based use. The participation of the local people in rewetting projects is the key to the enhancement of acceptance (cf. Pfadenhauer and Grootjans 1999, p. 95; Abel et al. 2019) and paludiculture offers different opportunities for this, especially in terms of the economy and employment.

#### *4.3. Political Stream*

The last stream we examine is the political stream. Following Kingdon, we analyze the public mood, the activities of organized interests and the changes in governmental and administrative structures.

#### 4.3.1. Public Mood

Public opinion is the first key pillar of the political stream (Kingdon [1995] 2014, pp. 146–49). Opinion polls point out that, for most Europeans, climate change is one of the most important environmental issues (Eurobarometer 2017, p. 12). Moreover, a large majority demands a stronger EU policy for climate protection.

More than four in five Europeans (85%) agree that the EU should invest more money in projects and programmes supporting the environment, nature conservation and climate action throughout the EU. (Eurobarometer 2017, p. 98)

Furthermore, a third of Europeans agree that agricultural pollution is one of the most important environmental issues (Eurobarometer 2017, p. 12). These figures demonstrate that the need for a more climate-friendly agricultural policy is clearly expressed by the majority of Europeans.

Other surveys concerning people's preferences towards peatlands show rather heterogenic and complex results. Restoration and nature conservation are commonly accepted by the public, but it was also found that a high value is placed on the agricultural use of peatlands or peat cutting (Tolvanen et al. 2013; Rawlins and Morris 2010). Obviously, there is a mismatch concerning the wish for climate protection or other ecosystem services and the preference for peatland use.

#### 4.3.2. Interest Group and Changes in Their Administration

As already shown, the most influential farmer associations on a European level do not oppose paludicultures, but consent to the view that they help reduce GHG emissions from agriculture substantially (cf. Kingdon [1995] 2014, pp. 149–53). The interviews in the agricultural ministries of the Bundesländer confirmed this interpretation (Interview No 1, No 3). According to Kingdon, another indicator for a ripe political stream is the turnover of key personnel in the government (Kingdon [1995] 2014, pp. 153–59). Currently, there is some evidence that, within the European Green Deal strategy of the European Commission, a "dilution of the sole power of DG AGRI to determine farm policy" is observable due to new working structures (Matthews 2020). This development implies new personnel in the European governmental structures concerning the CAP.

#### *4.4. Policy Windows and Policy Entrepreneurs*

According to Kingdon, new ideas and alternative approaches find their way on the political agenda if the three streams are ripe and a policy window opens. Windows open either predictably or rather unpredictably as a result of focused events (Kingdon [1995] 2014, pp. 168–70). Kingdon ([1995] 2014, p. 165) gives the "scheduled renewal of a program" as an example of an open policy window in the first mentioned sense.

In the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), such predictable open policy windows are observable every five to seven years. Two European funds, the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) are the financial sources of the CAP. The European "Multiannual Financial Framework" (MFF) defines the framework for these funds. A new MFF period leads to new EU regulations on the agricultural funds and ongoing

reforms to the agricultural policy (Massot 2020; cf. Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2016). In the words of Kingdon: A new MFF period is a "scheduled renewal" of the European agricultural policy program. New EU regulations define a new CAP period with new specifications of new steering mechanisms, adjustments of support, funding tools and so on.

In times of an open policy window, the actions of policy entrepreneurs are a crucial factor in the MSA. Policy entrepreneurs promote their ideas regarding how to deal with the problem defined in the problem stream. The background and the placement of the entrepreneur varies from case to case and Kingdon gives the activities of academics as an explicit example (Kingdon [1995] 2014, p. 180). Regarding the sustainable use of peatlands, Chapman et al. (2003, p. 526) point out the active role of scientists in the policy field, referring to Joosten and Clarke (2002) as "a land-mark book which was the product of a joint effort by the International Mire Conservation Group [IMCG] (a group of scientists aiming to preserve peatlands)". Hans Joosten, the general secretary of the IMCG, describes the work of academics and their achievements as policy entrepreneurs on a global level:

When—in 2006—experts and advocacy groups for the first time raised the issue of GHG emissions from degraded peatlands at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), they met with negotiators, many of whom had never heard of 'peat' in the first place. [ . . . ] After years of neglect, peatlands have gained the attention that they deserve in the face of their enormous emissions and mitigation potential. (Joosten et al. 2016a, p. 291)

As outlined in Section 4.2, academics developed the concept of paludiculture as a sustainable alternative to the unsustainable agriculture on drained peatlands and emphasize the current practice of farm subsidies as a crucial barrier to the large-scale implementation of paludicultures in Europe. The policy window on a European level opened with discussions and the preparation of a new funding period after 2020. Policy entrepreneurs became active on a European level in order to convince a decision maker in the CAP to put paludiculture on the agenda (cf. Greifswald Mire Centre et al. 2020).

Through the proposals and discussions of the European institutions on the future of the CAP, one can clearly see that the problem of the unsustainable use of peatlands and the solution of paludiculture became part of the agenda. In Annex III of the Commission's proposal for a new CAP period, a new standard for the good agricultural and environmental condition of land (GAEC II) is defined as the "appropriate protection of wetland and peatland" in order to mitigate climate

change (European Commission 2018, p. 13). Additionally, a new brochure from the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG Agri) explicitly takes paludiculture as an example to explain the new possibilities for the member states to use the conditionalities defined in the GAECs for peatland protection (DG Agri 2019, p. 12). As an amendment to the Commission's proposal, the European Parliament calls for an explicit fixation on paludicultures as being eligible for direct payments (European Parliament 2019, amendment 91).

#### **5. Discussion**

Paludiculture, as a sustainable way to use peatlands, is on the agenda of the current discussions and proposals on the future of European agricultural policy. The agenda-setting process took place according to Kingdon's theoretical expectations and the refinements by Herweg et al. (2015, p. 443): "Agenda change becomes more likely if (a) a policy window opens; (b) the streams are ripe; and (c) a policy-entrepreneur promotes the agenda change".

On a European level, the window for agricultural policy reforms opens regularly every few years when a new CAP funding period is under preparation. During the current preparation time, the problem of GHG emissions from drained peatlands was already on the global climate protection agenda and found its way into global climate protection agreements and actions due to the activities of scientists. We argue that the problem stream is ripe on a European level because these global initiatives took place and the political levels below became active in putting the problem of GHG emissions from drained peatlands on the European agricultural policy agenda.

In the policy stream, the introduction of paludiculture as sustainable use of peatlands on large scale is a viable policy alternative which fulfils most of Kingdon's criteria for a successful proposal. To follow Kingdon's analogy of the biological evolutionary selection process: like the bottleneck effects in evolution which result in the decline of genetic variability (cf. Nei et al. 1975), one might interpret the question of a sustainable use of peatlands as a bottleneck policy field. The only way to protect peatlands is to keep them wet and to rewet drained peatlands. Moreover, the only way to use peatlands in a sustainable manner for agriculture and forestry is to use them wet. Thus, the concept of Paludiculture had a strategic advantage that enabled its survival in the "policy primeval soup". Yet the crucial question of paludicultures' efficiency, especially in competition with subsidized drainage-based agriculture on peatlands, remains unsolved so far. Here, the policy stream is coupled with the political stream.

On a European level, public surveys demonstrate that a large majority of European citizens support the call for a more sustainable agricultural policy. Politicians with responsibility for the structure of the new CAP might consider these figures as representative of the public mood in favor of the implementation of paludicultures on peatlands. New working structures on a European governmental level integrated new key personnel in CAP decision making and indicate changes in the political stream towards a more climate-friendly farm policy. The initiatives of the European institutions involved in the CAP reforms show that the political stream is ripe to enhance the framework conditions (eligibility for subsidies and other support schemes) for paludicultures.

#### **6. Conclusions**

Our analysis has shown that the agenda-setting for the large-scale introduction of paludicultures on peatlands took place on the level of the European agricultural policy. At this stage, two questions remain open, which are connected to some extent. (1) How do the different political levels interact in the agenda-setting process? (2) How does this influence the agenda-setting and the implementation of policies and changes in peatland use towards sustainability?

Brunner (2008) points out the shortcomings of the MSA in the analysis of multi-level politics. For the case of paludiculture, Ewert and Hartung (2020) show that, in Germany, the agricultural administrations in the Bundesländer do not support paludicultures directly via CAP schemes due to their unclear legal status in the European regulations. All our interview partners point out that the sustainable use of peatlands is also on the agenda of the agricultural policy stakeholders in the Bundesländer; however, for its implementation, the stakeholders are waiting for European policy changes (Interview No 1–5). Future research should analyze this interplay more systematically and integrate it into the MSA.

There are already proposals in the MSA literature on how to integrate the decision-making stage into the approach (Herweg et al. 2015, pp. 443–46). In the case of paludiculture, further research is needed to investigate "decision coupling" processes that follow the agenda-setting on an EU level, as well as its implementation on national and subnational levels. John Kingdon's MSA can explain how the time came for the idea of paludiculture and how it appeared on the political agenda. However, the non-formal aspects of policy implementation are beyond the scope of the MSA and the important question of power in the realization of agricultural policy reforms on site (cf. Nuijten 2005) has to be investigated in future research. The transition to sustainable life on wetlands and the sustainable use of peatlands not

only needs a political agenda, but also a large-scale implementation on the ground, supported by appropriate funding schemes.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.E.; methodology, S.E.; validation, S.A.; formal analysis, S.E.; investigation, S.E. and S.A.; writing—original draft preparation, S.E. and S.A.; writing—review and editing, S.E. and S.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by BUNDESMINISTERIUM FÜR BILDUNG UND FORSCHUNG GERMANY, grant number 01UC1904.

**Acknowledgments:** We thank Sabine Wichmann and the three reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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