Institutional analysis of actors involved in the governance of innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes.

In this study, we used institutional analysis to investigate the design of innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes. The aim of such contracts is to better incentivize farmers for the provision of environmental public goods in comparison to current 'mainstream' contracts. For the analysis, we differentiated four contract types: result-based, collective, land tenure, and value chain contracts. To represent each type in the analysis, we selected 19 case examples from six European countries. Cases were identified through a mix of methods, combining literature review, web search, and expert consultation. After a structured data collection based on Ostrom's institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, we focused our analysis on the involved actors and their roles in contract governance. Our results highlight the great diversity of public, private, and civil actors involved from the local, regional, national or international governance level, each performing one or several critical roles in contract governance. We found that it is highly context-dependent which actors assume certain roles. We also discuss how provision of environmental public goods through the contracts might potentially be impacted by certain roles and their assignment to specific actors.

Metadata to describe the dataset on involved actors and their roles in the governance of innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes.

Agri-environmental and climate schemes are an important policy instrument in the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union to maintain biodiversity and safeguard ecosystem services provision for human wellbeing. In the presented dataset, we analyzed 19 innovative contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes from six European countries, representing examples of four different contract types: result-based, collective, land tenure, and value chain contracts. Our analytical approach comprised three steps: In the first step, we used a method mix combining literature review, web search, and expert consultation to identify potential case examples for the innovative contracts. In the second step, we employed a survey, which was structured in accordance with Ostrom's institutional analysis and development framework to collect detailed information on each contract. The survey was either filled in by us authors, based on information retrieved from websites and other data sources, or by experts directly involved in the different contracts. Based on the collected data, in the third step, an in-depth analysis was conducted on the public, private, and civil actors involved from different governance levels (local, regional, national, or international) and the roles these actors perform in contract governance. The dataset generated through these three steps contains 84 data files, which includes tables, figures, maps, and a text file. The dataset can be re-used by all interested in result-based, collective, land tenure, and value chain contracts for agri-environmental and climate schemes. Each contract is characterized in great detail by 34 variables making the dataset suitable for further institutional and governance analysis.