Sustainability assessment of biodiversity sensitive farming systems: a critical review of methodological frameworks

Farmland covers around 48% of the European Union’s (EU) terrestrial area. Intensive farming is responsible for just over 10% of the EU’s greenhouse gases emissions and is a major contributor to biodiversity loss. Consequently, there is a growing interest in the development and implementation of biodiversity sensitive farming systems that enhance biodiversity and environmental performance and provide economic and social co-benefits. Future biodiversity sensitive farming systems could take advantage of the more than 170 sustainability assessment frameworks already developed for the agricultural sector. They offer a great number of alternatives that differ on their specific interests with respect to i) sustainability dimensions, ii) targeted social actors, iii) complexity of the approaches, iv) type of quantification, v), spatio-temporal levels; and vi) targeted products or systems. Despite the wide variety of frameworks available, few consider a natural capital (or an ecosystem services) assessment approach explicitly. Frameworks that do include a natural capital approach do not combine it with a life cycle thinking approach to understand impacts throughout the supply-chain futhermore natural capital approaches have thus far failed to integrate biodiversity assessment as an intrinsic component. This prevents a better understanding of how farming practices impact on ecosystem conditions, and how it propagates into the supply of ecosystem services and social and economic benefits to people (i.e., public goods) at farm, landscape and at regional levels connected through the supply chains. In this paper, we critically review a selection of current sustainability assessment frameworks that are suitable for the development of a sustainability assessment framework for biodiversity sensitive farming, which interrelates biodiversity, natural capital and life cycle assessments. We have reviewed frameworks of different complexity defined as set of indicators, simple models (e.g., process-based, statistical), socio-ecological modelling tools and integrated models. Based on the 58 sub-topics defined in the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) guidelines of FAO, we have analysed the sustainability completeness of the frameworks. We have identified quantitative indicators and metrics that could suit our biodiversity sensitive framework based on their relevance, clearness, credibility, cost-effectiveness of data collection, robustness, monitorability, previous use in international projects, and sensitiveness to farming practices. As a main result of the critical review, we have defined a sustainability assessment framework for biodiversity sensitive farming at a conceptual level. The framework is based on a core set of sustainability indicators covering environmental, economic and social dimensions that will feed socio-ecological models and ultimately will inform changes in natural capital accounting of farming systems.