Beschreibung:
In the past decades, agricultural landscapes have simplified with crop specialization and the reduction of seminatural covers leading to a decline of biodiversity and (biodiversity-driven) ecosystem services (Landis 2016). This study measures the impact of landscape agrobiodiversity on the economy of southern Europe. The analysis relies on regression analyses to measure the effect of agrobiodiversity on farmland value and the value added of farms. A regionalized Computable General Equilibrium model is then used to examine how these results affect the economy at large. The results show that agrobiodiversity can have both positive and negative direct impacts on the agricultural sector in each region. In addition, there are indirect impacts to the food industry and services sector in the same region as well as to the agricultural output and food industry in neighboring regions. A uniform increase in agrobiodiversity would slightly increase GDP but a more targeted approach would likely be more effective