Reformed Common Agricultural Policy should incentivise biodiversity
Peta Hodge
27th January 2010
European landowners and conservationists have today joined forces in calling for biodiversity and other environmental issues to be placed at the heart of reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Not the most regular of bedfellows, the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and the RSPB want to see a reformed CAP providing financial incentives to improve biodiversity and deliver a range of other environmental benefits – including cleaner water and a reduction in the pace of global warming.
The two UK organisations are echoing the proposals made by their European representative bodies – the European Landowners’ Organisation (ELO) and BirdLife International – in a joint paper published today.
The paper argues that sustainable management of Europe’s land requires continued active intervention by farmers and landowners – which is why reform of the CAP is so vital.
The conservationists and landowners believe that the new-look CAP should share more of the characteristics of current CAP rural development and agri-environment measures than current farm support measures.
They argue that policies and budgets are needed at the European level if we are to meet the food and environmental challenges we face globally.
Europe plays an important role in global food security and in driving higher environmental standards of production around the world, the coalition believes.
Mark Avery, RSPB director of conservation, said: “Landowners and conservationists may not always see eye to eye but where reforming the CAP is concerned we are very definitely singing from the same hymn sheet.
“The current system needs to be overhauled to reward farmers properly for the environmental benefits they provide and which are so vitally important for protecting wildlife on farmland.”
CLA South East regional director Rupert Ashby added: “Both organisations see a continuing role for a European policy and budget to help achieve Food and Environmental Security (FES).
“We agree that the CAP must change to meet this century’s emerging challenges: the growing demand for food, dangers of global warming and threats to Europe’s biodiversity and environmental quality.”
The call form the CLA and RSPB for a reformed CAP to incentivise improved biodiversity, comes just two days after the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, told the Guardian newspaper that the international community needed find a way to price the impact of their decisions on biodiversity.
The comments expanded on views put forward by the Environment Secretary at the UK/Brazil Biodiversity workshop earlier this month, when he said: “We need the real benefits of biodiversity and the real costs of its loss to be part of our economic systems and markets. Because if we don’t understand the costs then we can’t value it, and if we don’t value it then we risk losing it.”
He also used the Guardian article to repeat his call for an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to be established.
He said: "We need to have a biodiversity equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One of the reasons we have made big progress on climate change is because we had a respected scientific body saying 'this is what is going on'. We need the same for biodiversity.”