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Abstract
Targeting has become the buzz word in the national agri-environmental policy reform
in Finland. It is generally accepted that more environmental benefits could
be reaped by implementing environmental protection measures where they have
the biggest positive impact. However, considering one of the main environmental
problems in Finland resulting from agriculture, eutrophication, the identification
of first-best policy or even the biggest contributors among the diffuse nutrient
sources remains as a considerable challenge. The model developed in this study
aims to demonstrate how the agricultural nutrient load potential can be calculated
in a way which supports the identifying of cost-efficient abatement policies. We
use metamodeling of dynamic nutrient load model (ICECREAM) to establish load
parameters for non linear economic optimization to derive abatement cost functions
for nutrient loads of 2 Finnish catchments. We calculate the difference in
costs of the spatially optimal allocation of reduction measures and compare with
the costs based on average non-targeted measures.