Along the lines of many other recent reports and official declarations, the RISE Foundation is now urging EU policymakers to seize the opportunity presented by upcoming EU farm reform to broaden the scope of the policy.
It asks the future CAP to incentivise farmers and other private landmanagers, such as foresters, to deliver not only private goods like food and wood, but also environmental 'public goods'.
Earlier this summer, EU farm ministers debated the concept of making public goods the main focus of farm payments post-2013 (EurActiv 03/06/09). Outgoing EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has said that EU farmers must slash agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020, with state support (EurActiv 16/09/09).
A recent report by the UN-hosted initiative on Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) urged international policymakers to scale-up investments in the management of ecosystems (16/11/09). The report argued that to increase protection of biodiversity, a price tag should be put on nature's different ecosystem services, often public in nature, to make them visible to economies and society and to guide policymaking.
Promoting rural development
The RISE Foundation, which promotes rural development and improved rural environment, was established by the European Landowners' Organisation (ELO), former EU farm and rural development chief Franz Fischler and his former chief of staff Corrado Pirzio-Biroli. The group says it is worried about depopulation and dwindling public support in many rural areas.
"The provision of European public goods, including food security, by Europe's land managers should, and I believe will, be a central role of the post-2013 CAP," said RISE Chairman Fischler, hoping the new report by the foundation would contribute to help broaden the role of the reformed CAP.
The author of the 'Public Goods from Private Land', Allan Buckwell, said that "all EU land is already managed" and farmers and landmanagers are already delivering public goods, but that they needed to be encouraged and incentivised to manage it even better "in a regulated framework".
He acknowledged that putting a price tag on environmental services is "empirically difficult and practically challenging," but stressed that EU rural development policy needed to be strengthened and its support better targeted.
Pirzio-Biroli also argued that EU support for rural development "is too small and too connected to farmers," to the detriment of the environment.
Increasing rental value of land
According to ELO President Mark Thomasin Foster, around 70% of the 85% of EU land in a rural condition is currently managed by farmers or other landmanagers, 15% is under state ownership and the rest is wetland or other land not in a rural condition.
Foster said that increasing environmental service payments for farmers "would increase the rental value of land" and thus boost landowners' income as well. He also argued that forestry should get bigger payments from the future CAP.
Paying for environmental services
According to the report, payments for rural public services could come from farmers, consumers and taxpayers through the EU budget or national budgets, but services would be delivered using CAP measures.
The report also argues that there is scope to deliver environmental services by creating environmental markets through cap-and-trade, floor-and-trade, offsets and contracts for services, for example.
Transatlantic cooperation
Italian MEP Paolo De Castro (S&D), chairman of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, agreed that "there is no environmental policy without taking into account farming and forestry".
He also deplored that the EU financial perspectives and the share of the CAP in the bloc's long-term budget are currently being discussed without any knowledge and debate on the priorities of the EU's future farm policy.
De Castro is today (2 December) heading to the United States to meet key US politicians and other players in the field of agriculture. This is the first time that European Parliament and US administration representatives have met to discuss global agriculture-related issues.
De Castro said a joint EU-US commission would be created to steer discussions and create "common ground" on the environmental services issue in view of the reform of the US Farm Bill, to take place at the end of 2010 or early 2011.
