Green Care: A Conceptual Framework - Frisk i naturen

landscape and aesthetics, recreation and amenity, water accumulation and
supply, nutrient recycling and fixation, wildlife habitats, storm protection
and flood control as well as carbon sequestration (Dobbs and Pretty,
2004). These public services gained from land have been the focus of the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and Defra (2007).
In the past, the focus has been on the negative externalities of agriculture:
water pollution (from pesticides, fertilisers and soil, from farm waste,
Cryptosporidium from livestock etc); the loss of landscape (hedgerows,
picture postcard fields) and biodiversity (wildlife, farmland birds etc.);
the spread of food-borne diseases (salmonella, BSE etc.) and gaseous
emissions (methane from livestock) (Pretty et al, 2001). However, the
concept of multifunctionality in agriculture switches the focus onto the
positive side effects of farming.
This has been supported by the Curry Commission (2002), which
recommended that subsidy payments under the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) should be decoupled from production. Thus establishing the
principle that agriculture and land management also have many positive
side-effects, contributing to public goods such as biodiversity, landscape
aesthetics, water quality, carbon sequestration and so on (Dobbs and Pretty,
2004)
The multifunctional nature of the services provided therefore gives a
multifunctional value for the land. From a review of the current literature
and previous work on the multifunctionality of land (Pretty et al, 2000;
Dobbs and Pretty, 2004; Pretty et al, 2008; Hine et al, 2008b), eight key
services produced by the land have been identified (Table 7.1). Many of the
services and functions highlighted in Table 7.1 have gone unrecognised in
the past, or because they have contributed to public goods or services they
have not had a cost or value assigned, and so have tended to receive little
attention.
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