EX ANTE EVALUATION OF A MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE CAP STRATEGIC PLAN FOR FARMLAND BIRD CONSERVATION

Curbing farmland bird decline is one of the environmental goals of the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2023-2027. Member State Strategic Plans must include specific measures within their Green Architecture (enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and rural development interventions) to address this goal, whose effectiveness must be tested directly. We evaluated whether interventions included in the Spanish CAP Strategic Plan (PEPAC) to favour farmland birds would reach its goal by means of an ex ante evaluation. Spain is a stronghold for farmland birds in Europe and knowledge of their habitat requirements and responses to agricultural management has been reviewed recently. We analysed interventions included in the PEPAC to explicitly favour farmland birds and evaluated whether each of these interventions would address bird requirements fully, partially or not at all. We estimated the proportion of requirements fulfilled by the PEPAC for each Spanish Autonomous Region (in Spain, rural development interventions depend on regional governments, while conditionality and eco-schemes depend on the central government). We evaluated 204 interventions, three of them included in the enhanced conditionality pack, one in the eco-schemes pack and the remaining 200 in the rural development packs. The proportions of farmland bird requirements considered by the conditionality and eco-schemes were 60% and 50%, respectively. The proportion of requirements considered by rural development interventions averaged 17% when proportions reached by interventions developed for each agrosystem and Autonomous Region were combined. Combined ex ante evaluations of the three elements of the Green Architecture thus ranged between 31% and 42% among Autonomous Regions. We conclude that the Spanish PEPAC falls short of the ambition to achieve effective halting of farmland bird declines. Furthermore, interventions included within the three elements of the CAP’s Green Architecture and among governance levels (central and regional governments) were not integrated to reach the minimum 10% threshold of uncultivated habitats established by current knowledge, thus hampering the general goal of supporting agricultural landscapes complex enough to ensure farmland bird conservation.—Pérez Pozuelo, P., Concepción, E.D., Azcárate, F.M., Bota, G., Brotons, Ll., García, D., Giralt, D., López-Bao, J.V., Mañosa, S., Morales, M.B., Navarro, A., Olea, P.P., Peco, B., Rey, P.J., Seoane, J., Suárez-Seoane, S., Schöb, C., Tarjuelo, R., Traba, J., Valera, F. & Díaz, M. (2025). Ex ante evaluation of a multi-level governance CAP strategic plan for farmland bird conservation. Ardeola, 72: 49-64.