12 December 2007
The Land Use Policy Group (LUPG) of the UK statutory
conservation, countryside and environment agencies has just
re-launched its website. This has been designed to accommodate the
increasing number of papers and reports arising from the work of
LUPG and is aimed at making it easier for policy makers and others
to access the information now available.
LUPG has just convened a very successful
conference in
Brussels on the topic of delivering sustainable land management in
a changing Europe. This was held in collaboration with the German
federal agency for nature conservation Bundesamt für Naturschutz
(BfN) and was aimed at stimulating debate on future policies for
rural Europe. Both the presentations made to the conference,
as well as a series of background policy papers, are all easily
accessible on the new site. The
keynote speech,
given by Mariann Fischer Boel, European Commissioner for
Agriculture and Rural Development, is also available to
download.
The LUPG consists of the appropriate Policy Directors in each
of the constituent Agencies and is supported by two officer groups
who carry out the day-to-day delivery of LUPG’s work. The
Rural Affairs Group (RAG) deals primarily with agricultural issues,
while the Woodland Policy Group (WPG) looks at forestry
issues.
Each of the constituent agencies contributes towards the staff
time and research costs of the LUPG work programme. By working
together in this way, the agencies are able to inform the
policy making process through providing evidence of the
environmental effects of various approaches to land use at the
national, European and international scales. In addition, by
presenting these results under a common framework, the agencies are
able to strengthen the impact of the advice provided, especially at
the European level.