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International audience ; Agricultural reform across the European Union has focussed debate on how multifunctional agriculture accommodates wider rural social objectives. We derive a range of policy attributes and undertake two surveys using multicriteria analysis and economic valuation to explore public preferences for rural policy. The results suggest a willingness to pay for both environmental and social benefits, notably locally grown food, water quality, wildlife habitats and maintaining rural communities. The public has assigned greatest weight to the policy option, locally grown food, that can be most closely linked to them in a direct-use sense and that is also routinely transacted for. Preferences were invariant across three regions and between rural and urban populations. The multicriteria survey yielded a different preference ordering and we suggest that this arises from the differing elicitation methods and is a potential drawback of the multicriteria approach employed.

Agricultural reform across the European Union has focussed debate on how multifunctional agriculture accommodates wider rural social objectives. We derive a range of policy attributes and undertake two surveys using multicriteria analysis and economic valuation to explore public preferences for rural policy. The results suggest a willingness to pay for both environmental and social benefits, notably locally grown food, water quality, wildlife habitats and maintaining rural communities. The public has assigned greatest weight to the policy option, locally grown food, that can be most closely linked to them in a direct-use sense and that is also routinely transacted for. Preferences were invariant across three regions and between rural and urban populations. The multicriteria survey yielded a different preference ordering and we suggest that this arises from the differing elicitation methods and is a potential drawback of the multicriteria approach employed.

AbstractThis paper uses a variety of data sources and methodologies to construct business as usual (BAU) water‐use scenarios for the Water Framework Directive (WFD) characterisation report, a key preliminary benchmarking requirement for member states. The paper addresses the most significant water‐use sectors in Scotland over the period 2001–2015. In terms of volumetric use, our figures are dominated by the demands of electricity generation. The next highest demands come from fish farming/aquaculture, which is mostly direct abstraction. Various industrial uses are estimated to be associated with significant volumetric uses (specifically electrical and engineering, fibres and food and drink). Because of structural changes in farm support, agriculture is the only sector showing a decline. Household demand is also a highly significant use and we are able to specify the public/private breakdown of demand.

While multiple ecosystem service benefits are increasingly emphasised in policy as an outcome for land management, most conservation management and legislation is currently focused on conserving specific species and habitats. These management interventions may provide multiple co-benefits for other ecosystem services but more information is needed on where these synergies occur in order to realise these benefits. In this paper, we use expert data obtained from structured interviews with key stakeholders to examine the perceived impacts of 11 species-specific conservation schemes on wider ecosystem services in Scotland, UK. With some exceptions, impacts were perceived to be mostly positive or neutral, suggesting that there are many potential opportunities when looking to manage for the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. Unsurprisingly, 'wild species diversity' and 'environmental settings' are the ecosystem services perceived to benefit the most from species conservation management. Despite the clear benefits of aligning biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service objectives, many challenges remain and future policy and associated management will need to tackle issues of scale as well as the distribution of costs and benefits.