SLI is leading the environmental impact assessment in the IDEMA project, which has the aim of evaluating the social, economic and environmental impacts of decoupled agricultural support. This working paper documents development of the environmental impact assessment module. The following issues are addressed:
- determination of the key environmental issues associated with decoupling
- how decoupling is expected to affect farmers production decisions
- how changes in production decisions are expected to impact the agricultural landscape and environment quality
- choice and description of environmental indicators, and
- extension of the AgriPoliS model (a spatial, agent based, dynamic simulation model of regional agricultural development) to enable environmental assessment.
Environmental analysis will be done for five representative agricultural regions in the enlarged EU: Marginal agriculture (Jönköping and Västerbotten Counties, Sweden), New Member agriculture (Vysocina, Czech Republic) and Mediterranean agriculture (Marche and Calabria, Italy). The results of the assessment will be presented in a new Working Paper to the EU-Commission at the end of 2006.