Principles for Building Resilient Agroecosystems in Europe
The resilience of European agroecosystems is deteriorating rapidly. The current landscape management strategy is in a rigidity trap which is partly maintained by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Climate change will rapidly increase the challenges for such rigid systems while climate mitigation and adaptation also require profound technological changes. Moreover, funding and monitoring schemes of the CAP should be used to increase the resilience of agroecosystems.
The CAP needs to be adjusted to support adaptive management, participatory monitoring, and active transformation towards more resilient and sustainable agriculture.
Participatory solutions should be applied to implement resilience building in all aspects of the project: assessing resilience, monitoring, hypothesis testing, and management experiments. Science, innovation and research programmes of the EU have to work together to find and implement solutions for a climate-friendly and resilient agriculture.