• El rol de los agricultores
• En la mitigación del cambio climático
• En los servicios de protección de cuencas hidrográficas
• En la conservación de la biodiversidad
• Protección del paisaje agrícola

Protección del paisaje agrícola (23)

Agriculture- the maker of the rural mosaic

Landscape aesthetics is another environmental service for which markets are developing.  Farming practices can generate landscape externalities and specific policies could provide incentives to enhance the provision of this service.

The term landscape aesthetics is meant to indicate the pleasure people gain from seeing, visiting, or even knowing of the existence of certain landscape features.  Landscapes have distinct values in themselves which can be of different types.  People may be interested just in ensuring the continuing existence of certain landscapes, habitats or ecosystems, even if they are not benefiting from them directly in any other way.  However, landscapes can also have more direct use values, exploited through activities such as ecotourism (visits to places with unique flora and fauna) or agritourism (visits to landscapes where humans have practiced agriculture in ways that result in interesting scenery).

Provision of landscape aesthetics often has important synergies with the provision of wild biodiversity.  Some destinations are set up to allow visitors to see unique collections of diverse species.  Many destinations are protected, which increases the possibility that they will also maintain species lost in surrounding areas.  Nature tourism can enhance biological diversity conservation, especially when local communities are directly involved with operators.

Agriculture can have distinct but different roles in ensuring the provision of landscape aesthetics services, ranging from the choice whether to bring or maintain specific areas or landscapes under agricultural production to decisions on how to manage lands under agricultural production.  Farmers may not necessarily take into account that their land may provide this type of ecosystem service, when managing and deciding how to develop it.

Indeed, in several developed countries, the provision of landscape aesthetics is one of the main reasons for the implementation of various publicly funded farmland protection programmes(24). For example, the EU supports initiatives to increase diversification of activities in rural areas and de-couple subsidies from production, moving towards more environmentally friendly agricultural activities and practices, promoting overall rural development.  Farmers worldwide are increasingly seen as stewards of rural landscapes and as managers of the environment, and there are several options for poor farmers in the developing world to access funds to support this approach.

Scale, location and coordination in supplying environmental services (25)

Landscape-level thinking is also in itself. Farmers can implement numerous changes to improve the balance of services provided by agricultural ecosystems.  Both scale and location are important for the effectiveness of the changes, and this in turn has implications for the coordination of requirements.  In fact, changes on the part of one producer to improve a habitat or reduce erosion in a watershed are unlikely to be sufficient to provide these environmental services, unless the producer controls a large proportion of the land and water resources important for the service provision.  This means that considering change at landscape level is as important as at the scale of the individual production unit.  It also means that the effectiveness of changes may depend critically upon the coordination between the actions of a number of producers(26)

Payments for Environmental Services from Agricultural Landscapes - PESAL
is a project funded by the FAO Netherlands Partnership Programme © FAO 2010