Agri-environmental programme in Finland serving biodiversity:working forward

摘要

The two aspects that characterize the agri-environmental (AE) programme in Finland are its wide appeal to farmers and a focus on resource protection (water). The former is highlighted by the 91% subscription rate among the country's farms, and the latter means that most of the funding is channeled into measures primarily protecting surface waters. Based on the results from the national monitoring programme, we review the ways in which the recent AE programme for 2000-2006 delivered for biodiversity.We proceed by outlining the programme's shortcomings in regard to biodiversity and the recent political process aimed at amending the situation.The monitoring programme has clearly demonstrated that the last AE programme has failed to considerably benefit farmland biodiversity in Finland, though it has provided valuable support to the most critically endangered traditional biotopes. A poor efficiency of the programme, in regard to both biodiversity and water protection, has been attributed to the lack of political will at the national level and de facto support to production rather than environmental management.Under international pressure, several improvements (including some implemented after its launch in 2007) to the current programme have been made, . We argue, however, that most of the improvements for biodiversity were cosmetic and non-binding. We will demonstrate the pitfalls in the political process towards a more efficient programme using a new scheme designed for replacement of the abolished CAP set-aside, namely environmental fallow as an example. We will look at the current implementation of the scheme based on data from the agricultural register and farmers' questionnaire in order to evaluate its ability to support biodiversity.