This book offers essential insights into the policy and legal implications of the results-based approach in terms of shaping recent agri-environmental and climate commitments in the European Union and encouraging farmers to deliver significant and quantifiable enhancements of the quality of the environment within the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

To do so, it addresses several cutting-edge questions: what is the current legal understanding of ecosystem services in the European Union? How has the ecosystem-based approach and its linkage with the multifunctional role of agriculture been recognised in EU agricultural law? How have agri-environmental and climate schemes evolved to adopt the results-based approach? To what extent is the Common Agricultural Policy’s new model encouraging farmers to deliver significant and quantifiable enhancements of the quality of the environment? What is the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy on EU actions concerning ecosystem and nature restoration? And lastly, what is the role of digitalisation and the AKIS in enhancing results-based agri-environmental and climate commitments in the EU?

Given its scope, the book will be of interest to a wide readership of researchers, practitioners, professionals, students, and policymakers interested in agricultural law, rural development studies, ecosystem-based management, climate change, environmental studies, political science, and economics.