The first newsletter of the PEGASUS project was launched this week! It provides information on the project’s progress in its first year and some of the emerging findings to enable a greater provision of public goods and ecosystem services from different farming and forestry systems in the EU.

PEGASUS (Public Ecosystem Goods And Services from agriculture and forestry: Unlocking the Synergies) aims to transform approaches to rural land management by unlocking the synergies between economic, social and environmental benefits provided by agriculture and forestry. This EC-funded Horizon 2020 project is investigating new ways of thinking about how farms and forests are managed. The PEGASUS team, coordinated by IEEP, aims to stimulate long-lasting improvements in the delivery of social, economic and environmental benefits from EU agriculture and forestry by identifying changes for policy and practice, based on active engagement with stakeholders, including farmers and foresters, working in different geographical and institutional settings across the EU.

The project has been timed so that its final findings and recommendations – due at the beginning of 2018 – can inform a number of key policy processes such as the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) but also feed into national and regional agricultural and forestry policies.

In this first issue of the PEGASUS newsletter, the project team explains how they have developed the analytical framework for the project, taking a multi-disciplinary approach to applying existing theories and concepts, and how this will be complemented by findings from a mapping exercise of the provision of public goods and ecosystem services and an analysis of the drivers influencing the provision of environmental and social benefits. The analytical framework is currently being used and tested by project teams in ten EU countries in their fieldwork, as part of the 34 farming and forestry case studies of the project.

Follow this link to read the first PEGASUS newsletter and:
– Find out what PEGASUS is all about;
– Read about the latest developments of the project;
– Hear about the emerging findings.

If you want to subscribe to future PEGASUS newsletters, please click here!