Intro; Preface; List of figures; List of tables and boxes; List of acronyms and abbreviations; Contributors; Introduction: Framing the agri-environment; Part I. The agri-environment in the real world; Working effectively with farmers on agri-environment investment; The Environmental Stewardship Program: Lessons on creating long-term agri-environment schemes; Do farmers love brolgas, seagrass and coral reefs? It depends on who's paying, how much, and for how long!; The vital role of environmental NGOs: Trusted brokers in complex markets.

Agricultural land use policy in the European Union: A brief history and lessons learnt: A brief history of agri-environment policy in Australia: From community-based NRM to market-based instruments; Part II. The birds and the beef; Can recognition of ecosystem services help biodiversity conservation?; A perspective on land sparing versus land sharing; Restoring ecosystem services on private farmlands: Lessons from economics; Scaling the benefits of agri-environment schemes for biodiversity; Social dimensions of biodiversity conservation programs.

Contract preferences and psychological determinants of participation in agri-environment schemes; Accounting for private benefits in ecological restoration planning; Part III. Planning, doing and learning; Defining and designing cost-effective agri-environment schemes; Transaction costs in agri-environment schemes; What a difference a metric makes: Strong (and weak) metrics for agri-environment schemes; Public benefits, private benefits, and the choice of policy tool for land-use change; Controls and counterfactual information in agro-ecological investment.

Achieving greater gains in biodiversity from agri-environment schemes; Lessons for policy from Australia's experience with conservation tenders; Improving the performance of agri-environment programs: Reflections on best practice in design and implementation; Conclusion -- Elements of good design.

Learning from agri-environment schemes in Australia is a book about the birds and the beef -- more specifically it is about the billions of dollars that governments pay farmers around the world each year to protect and restore biodiversity. After more than two decades of these schemes in Australia, what have we learnt? Are we getting the most out of these investments, and how should we do things differently in the future? Involving contributions from ecologists, economists, social scientists, restoration practitioners and policymakers, this book provides short, engaging chapters that cover a wide spectrum of environmental, agricultural and social issues involved in agri-environment schemes.

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