Adding Some Green to the Greening: Improving the EU's Ecological Focus Areas for Biodiversity and Farmers

Abstract

Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) are one of the three new greening measures of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We used an interdisciplinary and European‐scale approach to evaluate ecological effectiveness and farmers’ perception of the different EFA options. We assessed potential benefits of EFA options for biodiversity using a survey among 88 ecologists from 17 European countries. We further analyzed data on EFA uptake at the EU level and in eight EU Member States, and reviewed socio‐economic factors influencing farmers’ decisions. We then identified possible ways to improve EFAs. Ecologists scored field margins, buffer strips, fallow land, and landscape features as most beneficial whereas farmers mostly implemented “catch crops and green cover,” nitrogen‐fixing crops, and fallow land. Based on the expert inputs and a review of the factors influencing farmers’ decisions, we suggest that EFA implementation could be improved by (a) prioritizing EFA options that promote biodiversity (e.g., reducing the weight or even excluding ineffective options); (b) reducing administrative constraints; (c) setting stricter management requirements (e.g., limiting agrochemical use); and (d) offering further incentives for expanding options like landscape features and buffer strips. We finally propose further improvements at the next CAP reform, to improve ecological effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness.

Collapse of farmland bird populations in an Eastern European country following its EU accession

“…It is therefore not particularly surprising that the implementation of the greening measures was not very strong in these countries (Pe'er et al., ). Indeed, a recent assessment of the country‐level performance of the CAP reform in terms of development of the Ecological Focus Areas discovered that Czechia ranked particularly low within the countries considered (Pe'er et al., ). Our study shows that this poor performance in CAP reform in Czechia had most likely adverse impacts on biodiversity represented by farmland birds.…”

Coupled land use and ecological models reveal emergence and feedbacks in socio‐ecological systems

“…The rate of cluster formation in our study may be affected by the initialisation of the models with spatially uncorrelated land uses. Such effects are also strongly modulated by the knowledge and attitudes of land managers, which we did not consider here, but which can be varied in the model framework we used (Brown et al 2016, Pe'er et al 2017. Similarly, we do not simulate ecological interactions beyond those implicit in the ecological parameters used above.…”

Changing the fallow paradigm: A win–win strategy for the post‐2020 Common Agricultural Policy to halt farmland bird declines

“…The effectiveness of EFAs in enhancing farmland biodiversity has been questioned, largely due to the application and promotion of land uses with little effect on biodiversity and the complicated administrative burden involved (Navarro & López‐Bao, ; Pe’er et al, , ). Fallow land is one of the most crucial EFAs for farmland biodiversity according to experts (Pe’er et al, ), but only represented about 26% and 24% of the total EFA area in 2015 and 2016, respectively (Alliance Environnement, ).…”

“…Farmers preferred productive options such as planting nitrogen‐fixing and catch crops (a mixture of productive crops and/or grass species sown after a productive crop; Pe’er et al, ), which account for 71% and 73% of the total EFA area in 2015 and 2016, respectively (Alliance Environnement, ). Productive types of EFA are of doubtful value for the conservation of farmland biodiversity – their benefits are low or currently unknown (Pe’er et al, , ). The European Commission has acknowledged this and has given the lowest weighting factors to productive EFAs, initially setting them at 0.3 for both nitrogen‐fixing and catch crops (European Commission, ).…”