{"id":20881,"date":"2014-06-11T03:09:49","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T01:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.innovations-report.com\/hrml\/reports\/studies\/new-eu-reforms-fail-european-wildlife.html"},"modified":"2014-06-10T08:24:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T06:24:18","slug":"new-eu-reforms-fail-european-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/new-eu-reforms-fail-european-wildlife\/","title":{"rendered":"New EU reforms fail European wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Despite political proclamation of increased environmental focus, experts argue that the European Union\u2019s recent agricultural reforms are far too weak to have any positive impact on the continent\u2019s shrinking farmland biodiversity, and call on member states to take action.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>About half of all farmland and at least 88% of EU farmers are exempt from Ecological Focus Areas, the main \u201cgreening measure\u201d that could help wildlife on farmland.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Meeting EU\u2019s own biodiversity targets for 2020 now relies on initiatives from member states.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Experts from leading organisations offer six \u2018immediate actions\u2019 needed to be taken by member states, and six actions for the EU to avoid reforms that allow on-going agricultural intensification under a \u2018green\u2019 label.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_20888\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20888\" style=\"width: 275px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-20888 \" alt=\"59930_1_Homogeneous-arable-land_Germany_Querfurt-Plate_Andre-Kuenzelmann-UFZ_275px\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/59930_1_Homogeneous-arable-land_Germany_Querfurt-Plate_Andre-Kuenzelmann-UFZ_275px.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"207\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20888\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Intensive agriculture in the area of Querfurt Plate, Germany.<br \/>Photo: Andr\u00e9 K\u00fcnzelmann\/UFZ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Latest reforms of the EU\u2019s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have been declared significantly \u201cgreener\u201d by the Members of the European Parliament, following promises to make the environment and climate change \u2018core issues\u2019 for the new CAP.<\/p>\n<p>However, leading conservation experts writing in the journal Science warn that after three years of CAP negotiations the environmental reforms are so diluted they will be of no benefit to European wildlife, and biodiversity will continue to decline across the continent.<\/p>\n<p>Under the new CAP almost a third of direct payments to farmers are now subject to conditions relating to \u2018greening measures\u2019. However, disagreements over the measures have led to a wide range of exemptions being put in place.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_20889\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20889\" style=\"width: 275px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-20889 \" alt=\"59933_2_Heterogeneous-farming-Southern-Transylvania_Tibor-Hartel_275px\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/59933_2_Heterogeneous-farming-Southern-Transylvania_Tibor-Hartel_275px.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"206\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20889\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The agriculture in Transylvania (Romania) is still largely traditional but in change.<br \/>Photo: Tibor Hartel\/Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After analysing the details of the reformed CAP, experts from a number of major organisations revealed that about half of all farmland and 80-90% of all the farmers in the EU could be exempt from having to abide by two of the three new environmental requirements. At the same time, budgets to support voluntary \u2018greening measures\u2019 have been reduced.<\/p>\n<p>Individual member states must use the flexibility offered by the reforms to design national plans for sustaining ecosystems, say the experts. Unless member states take serious steps beyond those required for the CAP, the EU\u2019s own biodiversity targets for 2020 are very unlikely to be met.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_20890\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20890\" style=\"width: 275px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-20890 \" alt=\"59934_5_Homogeneous-arable-land_Germany_Querfurt-Plate_Andre-Kuenzelmann-UFZ_275px\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/59934_5_Homogeneous-arable-land_Germany_Querfurt-Plate_Andre-Kuenzelmann-UFZ_275px.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"207\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20890\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Intensive agriculture in the area of Querfurt Plate, Germany.<br \/>Photo: Andr\u00e9 K\u00fcnzelmann\/UFZ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThe weak environmental reforms in the CAP put the fate of Europe\u2019s declining biodiversity at the hands of the individual member states,\u201d said Dr Guy Pe\u2019er, lead author from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, who collaborated with a range of experts from the Universities of Cambridge, Kent, Freiburg, Bern, Wageningen, MTA Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary; Writtle College, and several conservation organizations (the Society for Conservation Biology, Royal Society for Protection of Birds, BirdLife Europe, Butterfly Conservation Europe and Friends of the Earth \u2013 Switzerland).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe EU should openly communicate this dependency, and encourage member states to make responsible decisions, rather than pretend that the reform allows meeting the EU\u2019s important ecological targets\u201d, says Pe\u2019er.<\/p>\n<p>The authors maintain that expansion of the EU and its common market continues to drive agricultural intensification across Europe at the expense of wildlife and natural habitats.<\/p>\n<p>The Common Agricultural Policy \u2013 which uses almost 40% of the EU\u2019s budget and influences the management of half of its entire territory \u2013 provides subsidies that increase the scale of farming throughout the EU. This has led to increased grassland conversion and peatland drainage. The situation is particularly severe in new member states, where the use of agri-chemicals such as fertilizers has grown rapidly.<\/p>\n<p>This continues to take a heavy toll on wildlife, with dramatic declines in everything from the farmland bird index to \u2018permanent\u2019 grassland that, in newer member states, has shrunk over 11% in just the last decade.<\/p>\n<p>To address this, the new CAP made 30% of all direct payments to farmers conditional on compliance with three \u2018greening measures\u2019: establishing Ecological Focus Areas, maintaining permanent grasslands, and setting minimum requirements on number of crops grown to stop areas slipping into homogenous \u2018monocultures\u2019. However, following thorough analysis, experts have found that the large number of clauses introduced to the greening measures exempt over 88% of farmers in the EU, and over 48% of its agricultural areas from having to incorporate Ecological Focus Areas. 81% of arable farmers are now exempt from the crop diversity measure, and the measure meant to protect natural grassland allows a further loss of 5% of their extent by 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe measures themselves do not include quality criteria for what counts as green,\u201d said Pe\u2019er. \u201cThere is little evidence of safe-guards in place to prevent continuing intensification of agricultural practices\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The authors conclude that the CAP reforms fail to fulfil Target 3A of the EU Biodiversity Strategy, which explicitly requires the EU to \u201cmaximise areas [\u2026] covered by biodiversity-related measures under the CAP\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany regions of the new member states, and countries of southern Europe, are still supporting very high biodiversity\u201d, says Andr\u00e1s B\u00e1ldi from the MTA Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary. \u201cBut there are new member states who were against agri-environment schemes, and some already decided to shift budgets away from Rural Development into Direct Payment for farmers, where the vast majority of farmers are exempt of any environmental requirements installed. Without obligation from Brussels, we may see no greening taking place\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe EU Biodiversity target implicitly assumes that the biodiversity-related measures under the CAP are effective at protecting wildlife. While some specific, carefully designed actions \u2013 such as planting flowers for pollinators, restoring species-rich grassland, or providing nesting areas for ground-nesting birds \u2013 have been shown to work when properly implemented, these are not included as options under the new compulsory greening elements,\u201d said Dr Lynn Dicks, a co-author from the Department of Zoology in the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe CAP should pay for \u2018public goods\u2019 associated with sustainable farming: thriving wildlife, beautiful landscapes, clean water, fertile soils, land that contributes to a stable climate, and diverse communities of wild insects to pollinate crops or regulate pest outbreaks. These are things enjoyed by everyone but not so easy to pay for through food sales.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFinding a way to produce enough food for humanity without losing these assets is perhaps the biggest challenge of the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, the latest CAP reform has not found a way to secure them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The authors offer six \u2018immediate actions\u2019 that states should take. These include maximising budgets to Agri-Environment Schemes, and carefully defining what crops and management prescriptions qualify as Ecological Focus Areas. They also list six recommendations for the EU to consider towards the next, still-much-needed revision of the CAP.<\/p>\n<p>They hope these recommendations encourage individual states and the EU as a whole to move towards sustainable agriculture, securing biodiversity and vital ecosystem services for current and future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite political proclamation of increased environmental focus, experts argue that the European Uni&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[5585,228,12258,7290,409,1311,6250,100],"class_list":["post-20881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-european-union","supplier-friends-of-the-earth-europe","supplier-helmholtz-zentrum-fuer-umweltforschung-ufz","supplier-mta-research","supplier-universitaet-freiburg","supplier-university-of-cambridge-uk","supplier-university-of-kent","supplier-universitaet-wageningen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20881"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=20881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}