The most appropriate way at the moment is to calculate a maximum score based on costs and income forgone and then give proportions of it to lower scores. This report from the UK discusses a number of options and comes to conclusion that applying income foregone and costs incurred in flexible manner is workable (see page 70 and 71). 

Most of current RBPS are focused on biodiversity. But there are some programmes and pilot schemes which focuse on CO² reduction. For example in the Montado (Portugal) they use indicators (type of vegetation cover) for measuring "soil health". Within the CONSOLE project there are two case studies which deal with carbon sequestration, available here (CONSOLE FACTSHEETS_D2.1). DG Clima intitiated a study on carbon farming which aims to delliver guidance for setting up and implementing results-based carbon farming schemes in Europe.

The Burren Programme in Ireland showed that transaction costs are quite cheap, they are 8 % of the overall costs and compared to traditional action based payment systems they are three times less expensive. Once RBP systems are set up they are quite efficient because the monitoring is inbuilt.

Develop a system of verifying results and controlling results-based payments that meets EU requirements, and train paying agency staff in its use. If you are interested we help to establish contact to the Austrian paying agency (Agrarmarkt Austra) which has experience in controlling results based schemes (Results-based nature conservation plan).

See example of existing projects and read guidance documents below. Indicators must be well correlated with the biodiversity objective, are relatively stable and respond to management but are not unduly influenced by factors beyond the farmer’s control and are easy to measure

Use the ‘freedom to farm’ that results-based schemes allow to build farmers’ acceptance, understanding of and interest in environmental land management. Watch advisory film below about how to involve farmers.