AUTHORS: Jana Poláková – Graham Tucker – Kaley Hart – Janet Dwyer – Matt Rayment

What is the relationship between the management of agricultural land and biodiversity? To what extent are the EU’s biodiversity goals addressed through the CAP?

These questions form the focus of a new study by IEEP for DG Agriculture. It is based on a thorough review of the relationship between agriculture and biodiversity and considers how policies, particularly the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), have worked in terms of their design, coordination and implementation for sustaining biodiversity and associated ecosystem services through agriculture, and how their role can be enhanced in the future to contribute towards meeting the EU’s biodiversity goals.

The evidence draws on a wide range of sources, including scientific literature, evaluation studies, an in-depth analysis of the policy framework, along with detailed information collected from six case studies conducted in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Romania and the UK.

It is hoped that the study’s recommendations will be taken into account during the current negotiations on the proposals for the 2014-2020 CAP, so that it can play its part in achieving the step change needed to achieve biodiversity goals by encouraging farming practices more conscious of their impact on species and habitats.