Water quality issues and agriculture: An international review of innovative policy schemes

Current agri-environmental policies are facing challenges to protect the environment, including in delivering water quality improvements. These difficulties are mainly due to payment restrictions and field or farm scale limitations in existing policy schemes. Innovative approaches have emerged in the last decades to overcome these constraints, such as market-based, landscape-scale and food-chain approaches. In order to understand the potential of these approaches to deal with water quality issues, we have analysed the design features of 62 innovative agri-environmental schemes. We grouped them into nine types of instruments that could provide benefits on water quality and we identified three main drivers for change that are: rewarding environmental outcomes, encouraging collaboration between rural stakeholders and certifying agri-environmental practices within the agri-food chain. The diversity of the schemes reviewed emphasizes the importance of the local context, which strongly conditions the effectiveness of instruments. Furthermore, mixing several schemes seems promising to encompass multiple governance levels involving both public and private actors. •Market-based, landscape-scale and food-chain approaches are of increasing interest.•We compare the design features of 62 innovative agri-environmental schemes.•Nine main types of policy and market instruments address water quality issues.•The main drivers to encourage change are rewards, collaboration and certification.•To be best suited to the local context the mix of several instruments is promising.