Brussels, 25/01/2010 (Agence Europe) - “Policy intervention will be required across a large proportion of the farmed area, including the more intensive arable regions, to ensure the retention of soil functionality, the maintenance and improvement of water quality, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, improved sequestration of carbon and enhanced resilience to flooding, as well as contributing to landscape and biodiversity goals. Alongside these interventions at the landscape scale, specific measures which are more precisely targeted in the locations where the supply of public goods is particularly concentrated, notably in the more extensively grazed areas, will also be critical.” This is one of the messages of a report published for DG Agriculture and Rural Development by the Institute for European Environmental Policy on Monday 25 January.
The report, “The Provision of Public Goods Through Agriculture in the European Union”, states that “the need to provide public goods in Europe would be a valid and coherent justification for a future CAP” (Common Agricultural Policy). Six key challenges can be identified “if we look ahead towards a revision of the CAP in which the focus on the provision of environmental public goods is strengthened”: - giving greater emphasis to the integration of environmental objectives at the heart of the policy; - establishing appropriate targets (with special attention on environmental public goods, it will be important to establish clear targets for the whole range of public goods that relevant policy measures are intended to deliver, the report says); - enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the measures; - improving monitoring; - effective monitoring and evaluation of the impact of expenditure under the CAP; - securing sufficient budgetary resources (to support the provision of public goods).
The report is the first ever attempt to identify the full range of environmental public goods provided by farmers across Europe and sets out the arguments for paying for their delivery from the public purse. The study identifies a wide range of diverse environmental and social public goods that are provided by Europe's farmers, including valued cultural landscapes; farmland birds, such as the globally threatened great bustard and imperial eagle; and the species-rich meadows that are found across Europe. Farmers also manage the land for carbon storage and help maintain high quality water and soils.
The report has been published as debate on the future of the CAP is growing. The report concludes that many of these public goods are undersupplied, and that this situation could worsen in the future because of threats such as trends in commodity prices, technological drivers and climate change. The report is available at: http: //ec.europa.eu/agriculture/analysis/external/public-goods/index_en.htm (L.C./transl.rt)