Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-12-Speech-2-273"
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"en.20020312.11.2-273"2
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"Mr President, farming is an economic activity that depends on biological processes and which accounts for the use of much of the Community’s natural resources. For this reason, it must play a double-edged and central role in the conservation of biodiversity: first, by consolidating farming practices that are compatible with the environment and, secondly, by ensuring the survival of viable farms and systems of production throughout the territory of the European Union.
Both the relentless intensification of farming and the fact that farmers are leaving the industry, with the consequent decline of rural areas, are having a devastating effect on biodiversity. A Community strategy for biodiversity must guarantee a method of farming that is more sustainable, in the broadest sense of the word, and which, in addition to the biological aspects, incorporates economic and social requirements and, ultimately, the survival of the rural world.
Furthermore, maintaining this sustainable form of farming is a prerequisite for the European agricultural model, which is based on the protection of multifunctionality in agriculture, as the Council and the European Parliament have reiterated in numerous resolutions.
The CAP is a useful instrument for biodiversity, as are the resolutions of the Earth Summit adopted at the Helsinki and Gothenburg Councils. On this basis it would be a mistake to confine the protection of biodiversity within the narrow limits of the CAP's second pillar and, more specifically, within agri-environmental programmes – designed to encourage the extensification of organic farming, the preservation of native species, the protection of natural habitats, etc. – for two reasons: firstly, because the second pillar of the CAP accounts for only 10% of the agricultural budget and, secondly, because although agri-environmental programmes encompass 20% of the EU's farmland, they have been implemented very unevenly and these days they are restricted almost entirely to the least productive areas of five Member States. This state of affairs is aggravated by the fact that there has been insufficient insistence upon environmental protection requirements in respect of market aid, and this has generally resulted in the setting of excessively low standards.
Therefore, we should extend eco-conditionality and encourage more active use of the agricultural market policy mechanisms designed to protect the environment and biodiversity. We must support these requirements in our legislation on food quality, plant-health products, seeds and genetic resources.
It is crucial that we strengthen the financial element of the CAP’s second pillar as well as making a distinction between its measures for socio-rural development and its agri-environmental measures.
We are facing a major challenge, which is to consolidate Community agricultural policies and to draw them together so that they work in parallel to preserve biodiversity."@en1
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