An integrated assessment of the impact of agrobiodiversity on the economy of the Euro-Mediterranean region

In the past decades, agricultural landscapes have simplified with crop specialization and the reduction of seminatural covers leading to a decline of biodiversity and (biodiversity-driven) ecosystem services. This study measures the impact of landscape agrobiodiversity on the economy of southern Europe. The analysis relies on regression analyses to measure the effect of agrobiodiversity on the value added of farms. A regionalized Computable General Equilibrium model is then used to examine how these results affect the economy at large. The results show that increasing local richness and regional evenness tends to have positive impacts on the agricultural sector and GDP whereas increasing local evenness and regional richness tends to be harmful to the agricultural sector and GDP. The results also suggest that some regions of southern Europe are better off with more agrobiodiversity whereas other regions are better off with less. A targeted program may be better than a uniform policy across all of southern Europe.