abstract

Biodiversity conservation is currently one of the most important goals in European strategy. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which was thoroughly renewed by the 2003 reform, aims at combining agricultural and environment, both through the compulsory cross compliance measure, either through rural development policy and agri-environment measures. The CAP put particular attention to agri-environmental problems such as biodiversity conservation, specifically in the Nature 2000 areas.
In the agri-pastoral system, multifunctional agriculture has an important role in biodiversity conservation and rural landscape complexity. The paper analyses the economic theoretical concerns about the biodiversity that is defined by an economic point of view a positive externalities characterized by a total economic value (TEV). Being an external market, biodiversity needs of the governmental intervention and of financial instruments that can preserve and protect this important environmental function. These instruments are represented by the agro-environmental Com- munity policy (CAP and RDP).

keywords

Agro-environmental Policy, biodiversity, externalities, Total Economic Value (TEV).