Published article
Impacts of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy “Greening” Reform on Agricultural Development, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Services, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
Authors:
Jordan Hristov
Yann Clough
Ullrika Sahlin
Henrik G Smith
Martin Stjernman
Ola Olsson
Amanda Sahrbacher
Mark Brady
The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has had limited success in mitigating agriculture’s environmental degradation. In this paper we simulate the impacts of the 2013 “greening” reform on biodiversity and ecosystem services in environmentally contrasting landscapes. We do this by integrating an agent-based model of structural change with spatial ecological production functions, and show that the reform will likely fail to deliver substantial environmental benefits. Our study implies that greening measures need to be tailored to local conditions and priorities, to generate environmental improvements. Such spatial targeting of measures is though incompatible with the design of a common direct payments scheme.
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