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To evaluate progress on political biodiversity objectives, biodiversity
monitoring provides information on whether intended results are being
achieved. Despite scientific proof that monitoring and evaluation increase
the (cost) efficiency of policy measures, cost estimates for monitoring
schemes are seldom available, hampering their inclusion in policy
programme budgets. Empirical data collected from 12 case studies across
Europe were used in a power analysis to estimate the number of farms that
would need to be sampled per major farm type to detect changes in species
richness over time for four taxa (vascular plants, earthworms, spiders and
bees). A sampling design was developed to allocate spatially, across
Europe, the farms that should be sampled. Cost estimates are provided for
nine monitoring scenarios with differing robustness for detecting temporal
changes in species numbers. These cost estimates are compared with the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget (2014–2020) to determine the
budget allocation required for the proposed farmland biodiversity
monitoring. Results show that the bee indicator requires the highest
number of farms to be sampled and the vascular plant indicator the lowest.
The costs for the nine farmland biodiversity monitoring scenarios
corresponded to 0·01%–0·74% of the total CAP budget and to 0·04%–2·48% of
the CAP budget specifically allocated to environmental targets. Synthesis
and applications. The results of the cost scenarios demonstrate that,
based on the taxa and methods used in this study, a Europe-wide farmland
biodiversity monitoring scheme would require a modest share of the Common
Agricultural Policy budget. The monitoring scenarios are flexible and can
be adapted or complemented with alternate data collection options (e.g. at
national scale or voluntary efforts), data mobilization, data integration
or modelling efforts.
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