Agricultural Change and Environment Observatory Programme
During 2006, Janet Dwyer, Peter Gaskell, Jane Mills and Julie Ingram were involved in a major three-part study for Defra to contribute to the programme of its new Agricultural Change and Environment Observatory (ACEO). The ACEO was set up by Defra in response to stakeholder concerns that the impacts of major policy reforms on the environment were being inadequately monitored, and it followed a successful CCRI scoping study in 2005 to evaluate how the Observatory should best operate. The three projects were undertaken in partnership with a team led by Dr Nigel Boatman at the Central Science Laboratory in York. The aims of the studies were to establish a robust basis for examining the environmental implications of the 2003 reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and to predict, track and interpret the emerging signs of responses to the reforms, among farms in England. The three projects were as follows.
OBS 01: environmental monitoring baseline project – to identify a set of indicators for monitoring policy influences upon farm-based environmental change and to present an analysis of their current state and trends, as a baseline for future changes.
OBS 02: environmental impacts of CAP reform, assessment of implications of farm-level changes on environmental outcomes – this traced early signs of change and evaluated their likely environmental significance, using ‘grey’ literature, workshops and expert interviews.
OBS 03: quantitative approaches to assessment of farmlevel changes and implications for the environment – this provided a systematic review of the impacts of farming practices and change on the environment, developed a framework for quantitative prediction of key impacts and produced illustrative case studies of how this approach could be applied in practice, working at the landscape scale.
The project findings were presented at a seminar to Defra and stakeholders in October 2006, and the results were also summarized in a synthesis report ‘OBS04: the environmental implications of the 2003 CAP reforms in England’. Much of the conceptual framework and key findings from the studies were reproduced by Defra in the ACEO’s first annual report1, and it has been used as a basis for developing the Observatory’s ongoing work programme for 2007-8. Nigel Boatman also presented the results of the work, particularly focusing on the pioneering methodology used for the OBS03 case studies, at a European seminar in Brussels in July 2007. The head of the Commission’s Monitoring and Evaluation unit for agricultural policy was at the seminar, which was organized by the European Environmental Advisory Councils (EEAC) group.
