European agricultural policy and biodiversity

Integrating biodiversity within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the objectives of the biodiversity strategy of European Commission and DG Agriculture, thus highlighting the crucial role played by European agriculture in the preservation or degradation of biodiversity in Europe. The approach to biodiversity within the CAP reform of 2013 is problematic, be it the proposed “greening” set out in the first pillar or the poorly defined objectives of the second pillar. This also reveals the importance of understanding the intensive and extensive transformations that agricultural systems are currently undergoing due to existing policies and international competition. In turn, it is imperative to understand the contrasting impacts of these transformations on various environmental aspects (greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, biodiversity, and others), as well as on employment and rural development.

The partnership with the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism aims at responding to two goals:

• Developing an analytical framework to understand current transformations within European agricultural systems, be they intensive or extensive, more or less labour-intensive, so as to examine the main impacts on biodiversity;
   
• Analysing the CAP reform proposals and identifying the barriers to a better consideration of biodiversity.