Agricultural Policy and Land Use
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here to read the most recent WG outcomes and working plan
2006-2008: "Health check" of the CAP
Chair: Huib Silvis, Council Member, Netherlands Council for the Rural
Areas (RLG)
Main outcome 2008
- In 2008, the WG Agriculture continued to give comments on the CAP
reform, it issued a report on the two seminars
organised in 2007 (more information below) and gave input to the WG Energy's biomass topic.
- March 2008: The WG Agriculture members met in Brussels on 11 March,
kindly
hosted by the UK SNH at the Scotland House in Brussels.
The meeting focused on two main themes: public debate during the CAP reform
process and EU-budget and CAP. More
background information on the meeting.
Download
the meeting agenda
Reform of the
Common Agricultural Policy: Background. Huib Silvis, WG Agriculture Chair
Public
debate: agriculture, landscape and the CAP. Renate Werkman, Wageningen
University
The English Environmental Stewardship Entry Level Scheme
(ELS), Stephen Chaplin, Natural England
- March
2008: Publication of "Globalisation, Land Use Change and Common
Agricultural Policy". This report provides an overview of the WG
Agriculture activities in 2007, namely the two thematic seminars and the
project "CAP in 27 Member States" The WG chair sent the report
to Commissioners Fischer-Boel and Dimas with a letter raising awareness on
the importance of monitoring and evaluating the environmental consequences
of CAP. It is argued that at present, the process of evaluation by the
European Commission is largely designed to determine whether policies are
achieving their intended objectives rather than evaluating their ultimate
outcomes.
Download
the EEAC WG Agriculture Activity Report 2007
Download letter addressed to Commissioner Fischer-Boel
Download letter addressed to Commissioner Dimas
Main outcomes 2007
- The RLG that currently chairs the WG Agriculture, has recently launched a website
on the implementation of the CAP and visions of its future role across 27 EU
Member States. This project provides an overview of how 27 EU Member States have been
implementing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and what they think about
its future role.
Access
the website CAP in a nutshell
The WG Agriculture prepared an overview of the CAP implementation
in the different Member States that feeds into the health check of the CAP (2007/2008), the mid-term review of the
Financial Perspective 2008/2009 and the CAP beyond 2013. In
this connection, the following two seminars took place in 2007:
- March 2007: The
seminar on ‘Global Economic Drivers for
Land Use Change’ looked into the consequences of
globalisation, world market developments and WTO-modalities for land use and
land management with an external group of involved experts from all over Europe.
Within
the WTO, the societal concerns are conceptualised as non-trade concern. According
to the participants of this seminar these concerns ought to be at the heart of
trade policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The CAP will need to be
reformed to meet global challenges like climate change, land use conflicts
between food, feed and fuel and the need to safeguard ecosystem services. There
is an urgent need for a targeted policy that meets these challenges. The CAP
will need to transcend from decoupling to recoupling with societal shared
values. To guide this process the debate about CAP needs to incorporate more
disciplines and include more societal groups. The reform process will inevitably
lead to another CAP architecture with other reallocation mechanisms. The new CAP
will be developed in steps: the Health Check and the mid term review of the
Financial Perspective are be two important phases in the coming years to which
the WG Agriculture will contribute.
- June
2007: The
seminar on 'Assessing the impacts of the
CAP'. The aim of this seminar was to explore what is being
done, and what more should be done, to determine the environmental
consequences of major changes to the CAP, such as the de-coupling of support
payments from production, the introduction of environmental cross-compliance
and the shift in emphasis from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2.
Presentations are available at: http://www.rlg.nl/english/publications/other/eeac_07b.html.
Download
the conclusions of the Seminar Assessing the impacts of the CAP
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2005: EEAC Rural Development Statement and CAP implementation
Chair:
Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Council Member, Netherlands Council for the Rural Areas
(RLG)
Download
the conclusions of the EEAC Conference on Rural Development in Vac (Hungary)
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2004: Preparation of the Rural Development Statement
Chair:
Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Council Member, Netherlands Council for the Rural Areas
(RLG)
- During 2004: the WG Agriculture prepared of a position Statement on Rural
Development that was issued thereafter.
- November 2004: the Chair of the WG Agriculture sent a welcome letter to the newly appointed Agriculture Commissioner -
Mariann Fischer Boel - pointing out
the importance of monitoring the implementation on Member State levels,
internal and external policy integration and the need for broad rural
development policy built on diversity.
Download
letter to Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel
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2003: CAP Reform and Implementation
Chair:
Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Council Member, Netherlands Council for the Rural Areas
(RLG)
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2002: Follow-up of Agenda 2000 and CAP Reform
Chair: Mark
Felton, General Manager
Agriculture, English
Nature
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2000-2001: European Model of Agriculture
Chair: Netherlands Council for the Rural Areas
(RLG)
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1998–1999: Contribution to the 5th Environmental Action Program
and Agenda 2000
Chair:
Danish
Nature Council (DNC)
1995-1998: Statement "Towards environmental sustainable land
use"
Chair: Sue Collins, Director, English Nature
- September 1998: Following a workshop on agriculture
organised by English Nature and the German SRU in the course of the 6th EEAC Annual
Conference in Tuusula (Finland), the WG Agriculture restarted its
activity.
- July 1996: A Statement covering environmentally sustainable land use,
reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and development of a rural
sustainability policy was published. It includes recommendations for
action by the EU, EU Member States and by the WTO.
- December 1995: The WG Agriculture started as a follow-up of the 3rd
EEAC Annual Conference on Sustainable Land Use in Reading (United
Kingdom) to produce a statement developed from
its conclusions.
Download
Statement "Towards environmental sustainable land
use"
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