Ekroos et al. (2014) Biol Conserv 172:65–71. 1 This is a submitted version of the manuscript, accepted for publication in this form. The paper can be found in its final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.02.013 Optimizing agri-environment schemes for biodiversity, ecosystem services or both? Johan Ekroos a,* , Ola Olsson b , Maj Rundlöf b,c , Frank Wätzold d , Henrik G Smith a,b Affiliations: a Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University, Ecology Building, 223 62 Lund, Sweden. b Department of Biology, Lund University, Ecology Building, 223 62 Lund, Sweden. c Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 7044, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden. d Chair of Environmental Economics, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Postbox 101344, 03013 Cottbus, Germany. *Corresponding author: Johan Ekroos. Email: johan.ekroos@cec.lu.se, jeekroos@gmail.com. Phone: +46-462228630. Abstract Agri-environment schemes (AES) have been introduced to mitigate negative environmental effects caused by increased agricultural intensification in Europe. However, there is still debate on whether currently available incentives are efficiently enhancing farmland biodiver- sity. Moreover, agri-environment schemes often lead to a yield reduction, which has been argued to potentially increase pressure on non-cropped habitats, with unintended negative environmental consequences. Here, we argue that AES should build on more explicit goals regarding (1) biodiversity protection as such and (2) provisioning of ecosystem services benefiting agricultural production. We discuss how this can be achieved by an efficient spatial allocation of AES measures to the benefit of biodiversity, ecosystem service providers and agricultural production. We differentiate between biodiversity conservation schemes, which target species of conservation concern, and ecosystem service schemes which explicitly target ecosystem service providers important for environmentally sustainable agriculture, most of which are common species. We construct a simplistic, conceptual model, based on well- founded ecological principles, to illustrate how to allocate biodiversity conservation schemes and ecosystem service schemes spatially, depending on where they are needed in order to meet the goals of protecting biodiversity per se and promoting environmentally sustainable agriculture. By understanding the functional importance of different types of AES we can achieve much more effective schemes in the future. Keywords: Biological pest control, land-use intensity, management intensity, pollination, productivity, yield.