Commissioned by the RSPB, new IEEP report highlights potential opportunities for Member States to deliver more for the environment according to the proposed changes to rural development regulation. The report sets out a series of principles and environmental priorities to help guide Member States in designing their future rural development programmes.

A new IEEP report identifies some of the key factors to consider on how to get the most for the environment out of the Ecological Focus Area (EFA) measure under the proposals for the greening of direct payments. Based on the literature, past experience and a seminar Brussels, the report aims to identify the key parameters that need to be addressed in a new policy.

What is the relationship between the management of agricultural land and biodiversity? To what extent are the EU’s biodiversity goals addressed through the CAP?

These questions form the focus on a new study by IEEP for DG Agriculture. It is based on a thorough review of the relationship between agriculture and biodiversity and considers how policies, particularly the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), have worked in terms of their design, coordination and implementation for sustaining biodiversity and associated ecosystem services through agriculture, and how their role can be enhanced in the future to contribute towards meeting the EU’s biodiversity goals.

IEEP has just completed a study of all 88 RDPs in the EU-27 and created the first typology of entry-level agri-environment management actions and their potential contribution to EU environmental objectives. Case studies in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Poland and the UK show how these payments are used to incentivise environmental management just above the reference level, and how schemes are targeted, designed and revised.

In this 18 page discussion paper, published in November 2008, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) presents a Vision for a 'Common Environment and Rural Policy (CERP)' .