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Abstract: Purpose: This paper aims at indicating the potential of agricultural measures in sequestering carbon as an option for climate change mitigation. The related value for society is estimated. Principle results: Agricultural practices like agroforestry, introducing hedges, low and no tillage and cover crops have an important potential to increase carbon sequestration. The total technical potential in the EU-27 is estimated to be 1566milliontonnesCO2-equivalent per year. This corresponds to 37% of all CO2-equivalent emissions in the EU in 2007. The introduction of agroforestry is the measure with the highest potential, i.e. 90% of the total potential of the measures studied. Taking account only of the value for climate change mitigation, the introduction of agroforestry is estimated to have a value of 282euro/ha in 2012 that will gradually increase to 1007euro/ha in 2030. Major conclusions: This implies that there is a huge potential which represents an important value for society in general and for the agricultural sector in specific. At the European level, only in the last few years policy makers have recognized the important benefits of agroforestry. In their rural development programmes some European countries now support farmers to introduce agroforestry. But still the current level of support is only a small fraction of the societal value of agroforestry. If this value would be fully recognized by internalizing the positive externality, we expect that agroforestry will be introduced to a very large extent in the next decades, in Europe and the rest of the world, and this will importantly change the rural landscapes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In densely populated regions such as Belgium where land is a scarce resource, nature areas are under increasing pressure of urban and infrastructural development. Decisions regarding land use changes usually do not fully account for the associated environmental impacts and the related social welfare changes. This paper aims to provide a generic monetary value function to assess the public benefits of amenity, recreation and biodiversity values associated with land use changes from agricultural land to different types of nature. This function can be used in cost–benefit analyses to inform decisions on land use changes, including the creation, restoration and compensation of nature areas. The ecosystem services values can be compared to the financial costs of such projects and accounted for in policy-making and planning decisions aimed at maximising social welfare. Important criteria for the development of this value function are that: (1) it should be transferable across sites and able to account for relevant characteristics of both the nature areas and the population of beneficiaries, and (2) it should control for spatial variables, such as size of the area and distance to the respondent''s home. The value function of our case study is based on a large scale choice experiment, as part of a survey to capture public preferences, focusing on land use changes among a sample of 3000 households in the Flemish region in Belgium. In the choice experiment, respondents were asked to choose between different hypothetical nature development scenarios, described in terms of their ecological quality (nature type, species richness) and a set of spatial characteristics, including, size, accessibility, adjacent land use and distance to the respondents’ residence. The model estimates are used to monetise public preferences for land use changes. The results show that the public attributes significantly different values to the different nature types, with highest values for forests. A distance decay effect was clearly observed, meaning that willingness to pay reduces when nature areas are situated further away from the place of residence. The size of the area was also significant but much less significant than would be expected. The application of the value function is demonstrated in two examples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]