Two weeks ago I gave a talk at a biodiversity conference organised by Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority. The proceedings of this conference can be downloaded here. The title for my talk was ‘Could European agricultural policy do more to promote biodiversity?‘ In today’s edition of the Irish Farming Independent I have a short article which summarizes the talk. I reproduce the article below and also the presentation accompanying the talk.
***********************************************************************************
The 2013 CAP reform had three overall objectives: viable food production; sustainable management of natural resources and climate action; and balanced territorial development. The emphasis on sustainable management in the second objective was a response to the growing awareness that the twin issues of land abandonment and agricultural intensification lead to severe environmental problems which required an EU policy response.
Among these environmental problems is the growing loss of farmland biodiversity. The recent mid-term review of the EU’s 2020 Biodiversity Strategy concluded that the EU was making no progress towards its target to bring about a measurable improvement in the conservation status of species and habitats that depend on or are affected by agriculture.… Read the rest
The CAP and biodiversity
