Environmental Co-operation and Institutional Change

Although the history of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is dominated by a process of centralisation, growing pressures to integrate agri-environmental problems into the CAP have revealed the need to embrace decentralised approaches in an efficient federal structure. Indeed, in recent years it has become increasingly evident that the agricultural sector must undergo fundamental changes in order to enter an era of sustainable development.

The authors do not believe that this will be an easy process, not only because agricultural policies in Europe are dominated by specific interest groups, but primarily because integrating environmental aspects into the CAP requires difficult institutional change at different levels. Centralised decision making at the EU level has characterised recent agricultural policy and the authors argue that centralised and hierarchical governance structures may fail to produce adequate solutions if they are not linked to regional and more diverse institutional arrangements. They demonstrate how these new institutional arrangements should be designed and how this change can be organised. In particular, they highlight the need for cooperation, and the participation of farmers, as a strategy to cope with agri-environmental issues and resource management problems.

Addressing the value of co-operative strategies to achieve sustainable development and cope with agri-environmental problems, this book will be of great interest to agricultural economists and those with an interest in ecological reforms of agricultural policies. It will also be particularly relevant to policymakers within EU nations, as well as policymakers within the countries of Eastern and Central Europe who will be amongst the first to be admitted to the EU in the next wave of expansion.