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Collective agri-environmental schemes are designed to improve the spatial coordination and targeting of agri-environmental measures. However, policymakers must craft these programs carefully to motivate farmers to participate. This of course requires knowing what factors actually influence farmers, since they relate to ecosystems in different ways. In the Netherlands, agricultural collectives appear to play an important role in motivating farmers, since they facilitate contracting and help farmers maintain communication with one another. The aim of this study is to explore the various motivations farmers have to participate in collective agri-environmental schemes, which can in turn provide insight on how to approach farmers and recruit them for such programs, taking Dutch agricultural collectives as a case study. To do so, we first developed a literature-based framework on motivational categories, which were reviewed and discussed in a workshop setting; these categories were then ranked and quantified in a survey among representatives of the Dutch agricultural collectives. Results showed that economic and environmentally-based motivations of farmers are perceived as equally important. The relevance of socially-based motivations is perceived less uniformly, although the agricultural collectives may profit from their farmers' social commitment to cooperate. This implies that there is a need for greater exchange among agricultural collectives, to help disseminate previously applied strategies designed to maintain high levels of personal communication and to establish long-term relationships. ; This work was partly supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant [818190].

Innovative contracts are needed that promote the provision of biodiversity and diverse ecosystem services from land under agricultural production, given that mainstream agri-environment-climate measures (AECM) funded by the public purse have shown limited effectiveness. Recently, various actors from the public, private and third sectors have experimented with and implemented innovative contracts that incentivise farmers for the increased provision of environmental public goods alongside private goods. Due to their evolving and experimental nature, detailed information on characteristics of contract design and governance context of these contracts is lacking, hence preventing them from being used more widely. This paper addresses this gap and reports the findings of an analysis of 62 cases, based on information from a literature review and complemented by expert knowledge. Following an actor-based typology, we identified innovative payments for ecosystem services (PES) as the most common contract type, followed by value chain approaches and very few land tenure contracts. Alternative classifications are possible, with hybrid contracts showing promising combinations of different contract characteristics such as basis of payment (action-based, results-based) and contract parties (collective or bilateral arrangements). The most innovative approaches were value chain contracts. They exhibited more tailored contracts between (single) producers and processors instead of the generic publicly-funded AECM, a stronger bottom-up approach to define the (mostly action-based) measures, and the interest of processors to use these activities for marketing purposes. In contrast, publicly-funded PES contracts appeared to be more innovative with respect to results-based payments rewarding the environmental performance of farmers, and providing them more flexibility and autonomy. Future research should focus on the benefits of such innovative contracts, e.g. with regard to costs and environmental effectiveness. ; This research has ...

Biodiversity conservation in protected areas requires strict legal limitations to land use. In the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) of the Republic of Korea (ROK), military control has created an accidental sanctuary for the world's rarest crane species: the white-naped crane (Antigone vipio) and the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis). Yet varying land use demands on the CCZ by stakeholders have caused disagreements in achieving cooperative crane conservation. This paper aims to clarify relevant stakeholders' interconnection and their motives that have led them to either promote or inhibit crane conservation in the Cheorwon Basin of the CCZ. To answer these questions, we conducted participatory Net-Map interviews and identified stakeholders with a powerful role in crane conservation. Our results identify 44 stakeholders whose trust relations occurred twice as often as conflicts. More than 80% of stakeholders included in this study supported crane conservation initiatives. We attribute local farmers' increased level of environmental stewardship to two key schemes: a community-led farming project generating financial incentives and a communication channel for stakeholders. Our case study demonstrates that Net-Map is a valid tool to analyze human-crane interactions, which is critical to ensure acceptance of legal restrictions to land use as well as crane conservation.

For researchers, conducting face-to-face interviews is always a challenge as it often turns into a one-way directed information retrieval. Therefore, interviewees not always are very motivated, enthusiastic and cooperative in responding to the questions. In the end, this has implications for the quality of the interview data. To improve the interview setting and the resulting data, in several projects the Net-Map tool was used to conduct participatory social network analysis. The tool is a combination of in-depth interviews and participatory network mapping. During the interviews, the interviewee draws the network of relevant actors, notes down their motivations and evaluates and displays the actors' influence and benefits by building towers using any kind of stacks. In this research note, we present the strengths and weaknesses of the method against the experiences with applying the Net-Map tool on four different continents and give ideas for improvements and further research.

Solving grand environmental societal challenges calls for transdisciplinary and participatory methods in social-ecological research. These methods enable co-designing the research, co-producing the results, and co-creating the impacts together with concerned stakeholders. COVID-19 has had serious impacts on the choice of research methods, but reflections on recent experiences of "moving online" are still rare. In this perspective, we focus on the challenge of adjusting different participatory methods to online formats used in five transdisciplinary social-ecological research projects. The key added value of our research is the lessons learned from a comparison of the pros and cons of adjusting a broader set of methods to online formats. We conclude that combining the adjusted online approaches with well-established face-to-face formats into more inclusive hybrid approaches can enrich and diversify the pool of available methods for postpandemic research. Furthermore, a more diverse group of participants can be engaged in the research process. ; We acknowledge the following financial support for the authorship and publication of this perspective: C. Sattler, J.R., M.G.-L., I.G.-B., K.P., C. Schulze, L.G.J.B., B.M., and E.K. acknowledge support through Contracts2.0 and L.L. and C. Sattler through InnoForESt, both funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program under grant agreements 818190 and 763899, respectively. C.C. and L.L. acknowledge support from PEATWISE, in which ZALF's research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) under grant 22408917. B.S. was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) through a grant for the PlanSmart research group under grant 01UU1601B. M.F.R. obtained support through SIMTWIST funded by Water-JPI under grant ENWWW.2018.4.