EU agricultural reform fails on biodiversity

Pe’er, Guy; Dicks, Lynn V.; Visconti, Piero; Arlettaz, Raphaël; Báldi, András; Benton, Tim G.; Collins, Sue; Dieterich, Martin; Gregory, Richard D.; Härtig, Florian; Henle, Klaus; Hobson, Peter R.; Kleijn, David; Neumann, R.; Robijns, T.; Schmidt, Jenny; Shwartz, Assaf; Sutherland, William J.; Turbé, Anne; Wulf, Franziska; Scott, Anna

doi:10.1126/science.1253425

Cited by 511 publications

(392 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…While nature organizations are increasingly willing to cooperate with livestock farmers, many farmers show little interest in managing nutrient-poor or wet grasslands. In addition, land sharing strategies, in particular agri-environmental schemes, are not achieving the expected results (Balmford et al, 2012;Kleijn et al, 2011Kleijn et al, , 2001Pe'er et al, 2014). This makes it difficult for land planners to assess whether a land sharing or sparing policy is preferable.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Lerouge

Sannen²,

Gulinck

et al. 2016

Environmental Science & Policy

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Land is a scarce resource and should be used in such a way that the increasing global demand for food and feed can be fulfilled, while ensuring sufficient levels of ecosystem services. While the demand on open space to deliver a multitude of services is increasing, drivers like global change and urbanization are undermining these services. Decision makers, from individual farmers to spatial planners, are in need of appropriate diagnostic tools to estimate trade-offs and synergies associated with land allocation and land use intensity decisions. This often implies trade-offs between food and biomass production and other non-provisioning ecosystem services. This paper presents an assessment on the farm scale using an integrated approach that combines spatial and economic analyses. It relies on the ecosystem services concept to evaluate land use alternatives. The analysis highlights current challenges to reach a societal optimal land allocation. INTRODUCTIONPopulation pressure results in an increasing demand for food and bio-energy products and hence also in an increasing demand for agricultural land (Meyfroidt et al., 2013;Tscharntke et al., 2012). This demand is in competition with the additional demand for land for residential, conservation, forestry, recreational, and other purposes (Zasada, 2011). With land as an increasingly scarce resource, spatial planners seek to balance land use allocation among competing stakeholders. This has led to a polarization in land use policies between demands for expanding urbanized fabric and the remaining open space used for agriculture, whilst natural areas are largely pushed back to relatively small and fragmented relics. Spatial planning has mainly focused on allocation of land to space demanding sectors and minimizing spatial conflicts. This approach falls short in considering present-day demands for multifunctionality, sustainability, ecosystem services, resilience and adaptive governance. While an integrative and spatially explicit approach to land allocation is highly needed, it is largely missing (Bomans et al., 2010b;Termorshuizen and Opdam, 2009). Particularly in strongly urbanized regions, the relation between the availability and use of space, and the potential services this space is able to provide to society, needs to be explored further. Increasing service delivery per unit of space can allow a decreasing spatial requirement for delivering this service, and hence, freeing space for other services. Fragmented peri-urban landscapes in particular, where interfaces between different forms of land use and associated actors are plenty, are in need of innovative concepts for land use allocation. Meanwhile, concepts of multifunctionality and ecosystem services already bridge the distinction between classical sectors like agriculture, nature and forestry. In the light of food and biomass production, the principal challenge is to simultaneously assess and maximize production as well as the other ES provided by bioproductive land (Balmford et al., 2012) which inevi...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Lerouge

Sannen²,

Gulinck

et al. 2016

Environmental Science & Policy

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“…The polarization of agriculture, with the intensification of farming practices in flat and coastal areas and the abandonment of less productive and marginal lands, is causing great landscape changes on a global scale (Donald et al, 2001;Baldi et al, 2013;Pe'er et al, 2014). This polarization is promoting wildlife-unfriendly farming systems (Brambilla et al, 2008), with a consequent loss of biodiversity in Europe, especially in regard to farmland birds (Butler et al, 2010;Sokos et al, 2013;Berg et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even if the EU recognizes biodiversity as a priority and modifies agricultural policies to stop and reverse the biodiversity loss (European Commission, 2006), agricultural intensification is still an ongoing process. The reformed CAP for 2014-20 provided new environmental prescriptions such as organic farming and protection of traditional rural landscape, which have been argued to be too weak to benefit biodiversity (Pe'er et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat- and density-dependent demography of a colonial raptor in Mediterranean agro-ecosystems

Maggio

Campobello

Tavecchia

et al. 2016

Biological Conservation

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“…At a global scale, the increase in landscape pressure continues with a consequent decline of biodiversity (Butchart et al 2010). Many European studies show that bird and butterfly species from agricultural habitats continue to decline due to agricultural intensification, as they are not well covered by the Natura 2000 protected areas network, and are under pressure in farmland (Kleijn et al 2001;Kleijn et al 2009;McKenna et al 2014;Pe'er et al 2014;Tscharntke et al 2005;). An explanation of this difference can be the time lag effects or critical thresholds that may have been passed.…”

Section: Research Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The cross-compliance of the CAP requires protection of environmental quality, but in practice it does not maintain landscape quality, nor, in many cases, biodiversity (Kleijn et al 2009;Pe'er et al 2014). Regional planning is particularly important where 'consumption' is a strong driver.…”

Section: 2 Multifunctional Landscape Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Europe: the paradox of landscape change : A case-study based contribution to the understanding of landscape transitions

Sluis

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EU agricultural reform fails on biodiversity

Cited by 511 publications

References 7 publications

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Habitat- and density-dependent demography of a colonial raptor in Mediterranean agro-ecosystems

Europe: the paradox of landscape change : A case-study based contribution to the understanding of landscape transitions

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