AUTHOR: Kaley Hart
Moving towards agricultural systems that are sustainable and resilient is in the long-term interest of land managers as well as wider society. Although the 2023-27 CAP has adopted a new performance-based delivery model, initial evidence suggests that the overall environmental and climate ambition of Member States’ CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs) has not increased as much as is necessary to meet the goals and targets set out in the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies or climate-related legislation. There are a range of reasons for this.
This briefing examines some of the reasons for the failure to embed a transition to more sustainable farming practices more fully within the CSPs and explores how to increase their ambition going forward.
It focuses on three interlinked topics:
- the adequacy of targets and performance frameworks, including data and monitoring;
- governance issues at Member State and EU level; and
- how to incentivise land managers to make this transition.
It proposes a number of changes required to stimulate Member States to take action to increase the environmental and climate performance of their CSPs, many of which can already be taken forward within the current programming period, even if they may not be fully operational until after 2027. They are also relevant under future scenarios should different policy frameworks or funding models be developed under the next Multi-annual Financial Framework.
Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash
