The Common Agricultural Policy: A Benefit or Barrier to Biodiversity Conservation in General and Bird Conservation in Particular?

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the principal agricultural framework for the 28 Member States of Europe. It provides subsidies to promote efficient, environmentally sustainable, productive farming practices. The environment and the conservation of wildlife thus form an integral component of CAP via two ‘pillars’: the newly introduced “greening” in Pillar I, which will come into effect in 2015 and the agri-environmental schemes of Pillar II. Whether changes such as greening will be more or less advantageous to the environment remains to be seen. This thesis examines the role that CAP and its schemes (current and proposed) play in biodiversity conservation, as well as the attitudes of key stakeholders towards them. Research objectives include critiquing the agri-environmental schemes of the 2007-2013 CAP and forecasting the likely uptake of new schemes in the 2014-2020 reformed CAP, as well as the potential biodiversity value of these.

Surveying a range of key stakeholders from research sites in East Kent and North Cornwall, as well as representatives from Parliament and the European Commission, I used a mixed-methods approach – postal survey and in-depth interviews. I hypothesised that scheme uptake would be limited due to financial constraints, compliance issues and bureaucracy, but that with greening, biodiversity outcomes would likely be reached. My research uncovered the threat that, because greening will be an annual non-contractual agreement that dilutes restrictions and compliance, making sustained environmental gains questionable, farmers may disregard schemes because of greening such that the outcomes for wildlife could be jeopardised.

However, with more stakeholder collaboration and further policy refinement, CAP does have the potential to successfully promote its aims of conservation and food production.