"POLICYMIX aims to contribute to achieving the EUs goals of reversing trends in biodiversity loss beyond 2010 through the use of cost-effective and incentive-compatible economic instruments. POLICYMIX focuses on the role of economic instruments in a mix of operational conservation policy instruments. To this end, POLICYMIX will develop an integrated evaluation framework that considers multiple policy assessment criteria – biodiversity and ecosystem service provision indicators; valuation of their economic benefit and policy implementation costs; social and distributional impacts; and legal and institutional constraints – at different levels of government. This multi-level approach is of paramount importance for effective biodiversity conservation policy given the overlap between ecological systems and systems of governance in practice. In particular, we evaluate the cost-effectiveness and benefits of a range of economic instruments vis-á-vis direct regulation through command-and-control in a variety of European and Latin American case studies. The suite of selected POLICYMIX case studies aims to provide complementary examples of innovative economic instruments such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and ecological fiscal transfers, and assess the possibilities for transfer of policy success stories, providing concrete learning possibilities for policy-makers. POLICYMIX actively uses advisory boards including land-users, local managers and national policy-makers, who collaborate with our researchers in the feasibility assessments of economic instruments. Based on this science-policy dialogue, POLICYMIX will develop a stepwise framework for carrying out policy assessment using available data, multi-criteria spatial targeting tools and tiered policy selection matrices. The POLICYMIX approach to policy design at multiple government levels is highly complementary with on-going EU ecological research on multi-scale conservation prioritization."