1 Agri-Environment Measures and the CAP
2.34 Rural development policy in the EU has wide (and potentially conflicting) aims. The protection of the rural environment is a fundamental feature of European rural development policy, but it also covers early retirement measures, measures on support in less favoured areas, and measures to improve the efficiency of agricultural structures.
The impact of rural development measures on the law of land use are largely a result of the introduction of agri-environment measures under the umbrella of the EU’s rural development policy, and it is with this aspect of the policy that we are primarily concerned here.2.35 The market management and price support policies pursued within the CAP have unquestionably led to an intensification of farming practices. That this has led to problems for landscape preservation and biodiversity, and to problems of water, soil and air pollution, has been recognised by European policymakers, who now recognise that agricultural production methods can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on local ecosystems, and also on landscape values.74 These issues have, for example, been recognised and addressed in environmental law. The EC’s Fifth Action Programme on the Environment, which established a range of objectives and target measures to be pursued between 1992 and 2002, selected agriculture as one of the five target sectors singled out for special attention.75 This was accompanied by an explicit recognition that one of the effects of CAP expenditure across the Community had been an over emphasis in some areas on production levels resulting in excessive intensification, with consequent degradation of the natural resources on which agriculture itself ultimately depends. The thrust of the 5th Action Programme was on shared responsibility and the use of multiple mechanisms (both legal and economic) to target the environmental challenges it identified.
This in turn meant that agri-environment measures have played a central role in giving legal effect to policies to promote ‘sustainable’ agriculture. This approach continued in the 6th Environmental Action programme, agreed in 2002, which emphasised the need to work with the market while using a range of flexible regulatory tools. The 6th Programme identified four priority areas for regulatory action by the Community in the period to July 2012. These included two to which the role of modern agriculture is of clear relevance, namely nature and biodiversity, and the protection of natural resources.76(a)Rural Development and the McSharry Reform
2.36 Agri environmental measures have, since the inception of efforts to ‘green’ the CAP, been closely linked with market management tools within the Community legal order for agriculture. This has meant that their environmental focus has often been blunted as a consequence of being included in measures with multiple aims. The earliest agri environment measures were introduced under CAP farm structures legislation77 aimed at improving the efficiency of agricultural structures. This permitted member states to establish zonal programmes to encourage the adoption of traditional farming methods in environmentally vulnerable areas. The impetus towards adopting an environmental agenda within the CAP was substantially strengthened by the ‘accompanying measures’ adopted under the 1992 McSharry reform package prior to the conclusion of the World Trade Organisation (‘WTO’) Agreement on Agriculture in 1994.78 The environmental aspects of the 1992 CAP reform were to some extent peripheral to its central thrust. It was primarily aimed at reducing the overproduction of many agricultural commodities within the CAP regime, while at the same time responding to the ongoing WTO negotiations leading to the 1994 agreement. The 1992 ‘agri-environment regulation’,79 one of the so-called accompanying measures, was nevertheless an important step forward, as member states were required (for the first time) to draw up agri-environment programmes and submit them to the European Commission to a set timescale.
(b)Agenda 2000
2.37 The next major development was effected by the Agenda 2000 reform, which positioned greatly expanded agri-environmental measures within the wider context of ‘rural development’ policy. The Commission’s original proposals for Agenda 2000 posited an expansion of rural development policy to enable agriculture to adapt to changes in market evolution, market policy and trade rules, as well as the need to promote sustainability in land use.80 They envisaged deepening and extending the 1992 CAP reforms in order to shift agricultural policy towards the introduction of a multi-faceted concept of agriculture, to which a strong rural development policy was integral. This in turn led to the adoption of the ‘multifunctional’ model of European Agriculture by the Berlin European Council in March 1999, which envisaged that the final Agenda 2000 reform should be aimed at securing a multifunctional, sustainable and competitive agriculture throughout Europe from the beginning of the new millennium.81
2.38 Although ‘multi functionality’ became a cornerstone of European farm policy, it has already been noted82 that the Agenda 2000 reforms primarily represented an extension of the 1992 MacSharry measures. As such they were premised on the need to continue the progress made since 1992 in reducing institutional surpluses and in introducing further agri-environment measures on the model of the ‘accompanying measures’ adopted in 1992. Their tenor was therefore one of incremental change, not radical innovation. One consequence of this approach was that agri-environment measures remained linked to commodity management and continued to be seen, by many, as subsidiary to the principal market support function of the CAP.
2.39 Turning to the environmental measures themselves, the Agenda 2000 reform package moved agri-environment policy firmly into the broader framework of the new policy on rural development, and in so doing strengthened its role within the framework of the CAP.
Agenda 2000 also instituted a major reorientation in the administration and policy goals of agricultural policy, with rural development becoming the ‘second pillar’ of the CAP alongside market management.(c)The 1999 Rural Development Regulation
2.40 The 1999 Rural Development Regulation83 brought together all previous rural development measures, including the 1992 accompanying measures on agri environment, early retirement and forestry, into one composite framework regulation. The objectives envisioned for rural development policy remained considerably wider than environmental protection however, and member states were able to include funded measures in their rural development plans for nine objectives in total – of which the promotion of agricultural methods designed to protect the environment and maintain the countryside was just one.84 The European Commission rather ambitiously claimed that the regulation had laid the foundations for ‘a comprehensive and consistent rural development policy whose task will be to supplement market management by ensuring that agricultural expenditure is devoted more than in the past to spatial development and nature conservancy, the establishment of young farmers etc.’ and other development programmes in rural areas.85 Although there was a commitment to significantly higher expenditure on rural development and environmental measures, however, the proportion of total CAP expenditure dedicated to rural development was only approximately 10% of the total CAP budget.86 And in turn, of course, expenditure specifically dedicated to environmental programmes made up only a small part of an overall rural development budget with much wider ranging objectives.
2.41 Most of the agri-environment measures implemented in England and Wales over the decade to 2010 were approved (and funded) under the 1999 Rural Development Regulation. These included the Environmentally Sensitive Areas programme in England, Countryside Stewardship, and the Environmental Stewardship Scheme (both Entry Level and Higher Level Stewardship).87 In Wales the principal agri-environment schemes – Tir Gofal and Tir Cynnal – were also products of the policy enshrined in the 1999 Regulation.
2.42 The principal change since then has been a move to a more strategic use of rural development initiatives, based on strategic planning. The policies set out in the Rural Development Plans for England and for Wales, now have to meet the requirements of the 2013 Rural Development Regulation, which adopts a more strategic approach and links its objectives more closely to strategic policy initiatives, as outlined below. This builds upon a move to strategic planning for rural development signalled in the 2005 Rural Development Regulation.