In the UNISECO project, a participatory multi-method assessment of current and newly proposed market and policy instruments was carried out to inform policy making about how to address barriers to agro-ecological transitions. The assessment included a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA). The application of the Multi-Criteria Analysis developed an ex-ante impact assessment for improving the knowledge about proposed policy instruments to address the barriers to the adoption of key agro-ecological practices and to the necessary changes in the governance dimension of the farming systems in the 15 case study countries. This allowed us to understand: 

• the expected performance and relevance of the policy instruments, including their strengths and weaknesses, with respect to agro-ecological transitions; 
• the synergies and conflicts among policy instruments, the most innovative instruments and the trajectories in public and private decision making to support the agro-ecological transition.

What is a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA)?

The Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) is a sound methodology to provide a choice, ranking, classification, and sorting of a set of MPIs, based on explicit objectives and a set of decision criteria. This allows reaching a synthetic judgment, especially when the criteria cannot be expressed in monetary terms, such as the effectiveness, efficiency and coherence of market and policy instruments (MPIs). MCA has been extensively applied to the evaluation of MPIs in agricultural/environmental fields, being able to capture the distributional impacts of MPIs (e.g. on different stakeholders, territorial levels) and the trade-offs between the criteria, and facilitating stake-holders’ involvement in the decision-making process. Stakeholder involvement is especially important in the agricultural and environmental area, where conflicts exist between different interests. Granting stakeholders more influence on the decisions about MPIs can provide a better understanding of the preferences of/impacts on local actors, thereby improving the quality of the decisions. MCA is widely applied by national governments and international institutions and many officially released guidelines and ready-to-use tools exist. Here, the MCA builds on two key official documents, i.e. EC (2017) & UK-DCLG (2009).

Please find enclosed a brief guideline which we put together in order to help any organisation interested in testing and using Multi-Criteria Analysis to assess market and policy instruments together with decision-makers, implementers, beneficiaries and other potentially impacted stakeholders, as a foundation for devising and co-creating better strategies and incentives to promote agro-ecological transitions, or more broadly sustainable land use. Make sure to use the guideline together with the associated assessment matrix (Excel file).

Guideline and assessment matrix for Multi-Criteria Analysis

• Guideline and assessment matrix for Multi-Criteria Analysis