Agriculture and water quality in Ireland: New ideas for policy

Agricultural production is a major pressure on water quality. A multitude of policies and programmes have been designed across the world to mitigate this risk. Although many initiatives have been helpful, they have not sufficiently addressed water quality problems. Overall, progress to mitigate risk to water quality has been generally slow. We advocate for a new framework for mitigating the risk to water quality resulting from agricultural production, essentially moving the focus from mitigation actions at the farm level to water quality targets at the catchment level. Specifically, we argue for a broader perspective capable of removing the ambiguity, confusion and administrative burden inherent in the variety of agri-environment management plans that farmers have to adopt (voluntarily or via regulations) but also incorporate insights from behavioural sciences to provide a better understanding of the motivations behind (non)compliance with water quality management and mitigation measures. This perspective aims to provide an improved understanding and more convincing conditions for policies aimed at improving water quality.