Rural development policy and the provision of public goods: challenges for evaluation

Environmental “public goods” generated by agricultural land use are discussed in terms of their conceptual underpinnings and how they have been addressed to date in European Union policy for agriculture and rural development. The current debate on CAP reform has intensified the already considerable debate over how these goods should be valued, and how the relevant policy measures should be evaluated. Against this background, a number of methodological and practical issues for evaluation are discussed, including accounting for spatial scale and diversity, the estimation of use and non-use values, governance, potential conflict between “public goods” and their marketisation, and accounting for the marginal effects of rural development policy on environmental assets and their values.