Webinar – the impact of landscape agrobiodiversity on the economy of southern Europe

Speaker:

Lea Nicita, European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) and CMCC

Moderator: Monia Santini, CMCC

Biodiversity conservation is increasingly seen as key to maintaining and enhancing the provision of ecosystem services. Biodiversity conservation in the agriculture landscape can contribute to agricultural productivity and sustainability through the ecosystem services, such as pollination or biological control of pests, that biodiversity provides.
The webinar will illustrate the results of a study measuring the impact of landscape agrobiodiversity on the economy of southern Europe. The assessment relies on regression analyses to measure the effect of agrobiodiversity on farmland value. A regionalized Computable General Equilibrium model is then used to examine how these impacts affect the economy at large. The results show that agrobiodiversity can have a substantial direct impact 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 in neighboring regions. Overall, agrobiodiversity leads to a small but positive effect on GDP.