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CAP: What is it? 

The Common Agricultural Policy has its origins in the Treaty of Rome from 1957 when the European Economic Community was created. A few articles of this treaty were devoted to the Agricultural sector.

Given the precarious state of the agricultural sector after the Second World War and at the insistence of French diplomats a legal framework (including aid plans among other measures) was put in place and named the Common Agricultural Policy. Its main goals were to support farmers and protect the rural economy [42]. CAP has since seen many reforms and alterations in an attempt to keep the policy-relevant in the ever-changing socioeconomic landscape.

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Below you can find an overview of topics that relate to CAP.

Structure

The Common Agricultural Policy used to be a cornerstone of the EU and it changed throughout the years to stay relevant.

Finances

The intention of CAP is to support farmers income and motivate them to achieve a higher production rate

Law making

CAP is embedded in an extensive amount of complex European laws. 

Link to Biodiversity

With lower food-demand, other problems became salient: land abandonment and biodiversity loss are rising threats to Europe’s ecological systems.

CAP

This website investigates the tension between the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and biodiversity.

One of CAP’s official goals is to benefit biodiversity [1,2], but there have been severe issues in realizing this goal, and, as we will argue, CAP falls short of being a solution to any of the major threats to biodiversity.

For the purpose of this investigation, we will introduce the reader to the general concept of biodiversity, analyze CAP itself, take a look at the upcoming reform of CAP and what this could mean for biodiversity, and discuss opportunities for different stakeholders that arise out of the current situation.

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Our Goal
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