Action needed for the EU Common Agricultural Policy to address sustainability challenges (Preprint version)

Making agriculture sustainable is a global challenge. In the European Union (EU), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is failing with respect to biodiversity, climate, soil, land degradation as well as socio-economic challenges especially in rural areas. The European Commission’s proposal for a CAP post-2020 allows Member States to choose low-ambition implementation. With a new Parliament and Commission in place, the reform process has now restarted. It is therefore time to act on urgent challenges and address citizens’ demands for sustainable agriculture, using the full breadth of available scientific evidence and knowledge. Concerned about attempts to dilute the environmental ambition of the future CAP, we call on the European Parliament, the EU’s Member States and the European Commission to adopt ten urgent action points for delivering sustainable food production, biodiversity conservation, and climate mitigation towards an evidence-based, future-proof European agriculture. TheThis version of the paper has been made publically available for signatories to support, from 4.11.2019 until 19.2.2020. The final version is available as a paper in People and Nature