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Indicator Assessment
Mineral fertilizer use is expected to increase considerably in the new Member States, but remains lower than in the EU-15 in absolute terms; this may lead to increases in associated environmental pressures. Best practices for fertilizer handling could significantly reduce the environmental pressures.
Baseline scenario
The following developments are expected for use of fertilizers:
This mainly reflects the differences between the EU-15 and the New-8 in terms of increases in application rates and yields.
However, despite yield increases, it remains significantly lower in the New-8 than in the EU-15 in 2020 (13% for N at 64.5 kg/ha, 10% for P at 20.5 kg/ha and 23% for K at 21 kg/ha). In contrast, the use of organic supply on crops is expected to decrease slightly over the period; in 2020, it represents about 36% and 27% of total fertilizer use in the EU-15 and New-8 respectively.
Kilogram per hectare for total use of mineral fertilizers and in per cent for change in fertilizer consumption from 2001 to 2020
There no specific policies adopted for for Pan-European region. However, the Helsinki Commission for the Protection of Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea (HELCOM) has developed recommendations for its Parties in this regard.
The fertiliser use is relevant to two EU Directives: the Nitrates Directive (91/676/EC) and the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). The Nitrates Directive (Council of the European Communities, 1991) has the general purpose of "reducing water pollution caused or induced by nitrates from agricultural sources and prevent further such pollution" (Art.1). A threshold nitrate concentration of 50 mg/l is set as the maximum permissible level, and the Directive limits applications of livestock manure to land to 170 kg N/ha/yr. The Water Framework Directive (Council of the European Communities, 2000) requires all inland and coastal waters to reach "good status" by 2015. Good ecological status is defined in terms of the quality of the biological community, hydrological characteristics and chemical characteristics. The Sixth environmental action programme (European Commission, 2001), encourages the full implementation of both the Nitrates and Water Framework Directives, in order to achieve levels of water quality that do not give rise to unacceptable impacts on, and risks to, human health and the environment.
No specific policy context directly related to the indicator is identified at the subregional level. Indirectly EECCA Environmental Strategy emphasizes a need 'to implement practices for increase of nutrients levels' and 'to provide preconditions for facilitating production of environmentally clean food', which subsequently include amount of used fertilizers.
There is no specific target for this indicator
Some countries set national targets for the use of nutrients per hectare frame however these targets are not reported at the international level. Special research is needed to identify availability of targets at the EECCA countries.
Projections of the indicator are calculated using the CAPSIM modelling tool which has been developed by EuroCARE GBmv (Bonn, Germany). The indicator is presented as an intermediate result within the model.
CAPSIM is a European partial equilibrium modelling tool with behavioural functions for activity levels, input demand, consumer demand and processing. It is designed for policy-relevant analysis of the CAP and consequently covers the whole of agriculture of EU Member States in the concepts of the Economic Accounts (EAA) at a high level of disaggregation, both in the list of included items (cropping and livestock patterns and animal products per country) and in policy coverage. Technological, structural and preference changes combine with changes in exogenous inputs (e.g. population, prices or household expenditure) to determine the future development of agriculture.
The modell allows combining different projections, for example from modelling tools, expert panels or trends forecasts, and finds a compromise between these under a set of economic (e.g. market balances), spatial (e.g. used vs. available areas) and technical (e.g. balancing of feed contents and animal requirements) constraints. The projections from the following organisations have been taken into account: European Comission (2004a); FAPRI, (2004); FAO (Bruinsma, 2003); and IFPRI (Rosenrant et al., 2001a and 2001b).
CAPSIM is augmented by a calculation of nutrient balances (N,P,K) and gaseous emissions.
For more information see: http://www.uni-mannheim.de/edz/pdf/eurostat/05/KS-AZ-05-001-EN.pdf or http://scenarios.ewindows.eu.org/reports/fol949029/fol040583/Agriculture_final_report.pdf
The baseline scenario follows a conventional definition and expands on current expectations regarding macro-economic, sectoral, technological and societal developments, as well as including those policies that have been implemented and/or adopted, which typically refer to pieces of legislation such as EU directives or political agreements.
EEA's outlooks across the various sectors and themes use a common reference set of assumptions for the key driving forces to ensure consistency across the board and facilitate cross-cutting analysis. This reference set builds on the socio-economic assumptions developed for the DG TREN baseline projections 'European energy and transport trends to 2030', which are also being used within the Clean Air forEurope (CAFE, DG ENV) programme. Within this framework, assumptions have been developed as a consistent set and cover the following key driving forces:
Population
The European population is expected to stabilize, but gradually to become an ageing society. Main demographical trends are presented in the Table 1. below
Table 1. Demography - population development 1990 - 2030
Population (millions) | ||||
Year | EEA - 31 | EU - 25 | EU - 15 | New - 10 |
1990 | 540 | 441 | 366 | 75 |
2000 | 563 | 453 | 379 | 75 |
2010 | 586 | 461 | 388 | 73 |
2020 | 586 | 462 | 390 | 72 |
2030 | 587 | 458 | 389 | 69 |
Average annual growth rates (%) | ||||
1990 -2000 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.3 | -0.1 |
1990 -2030 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.2 | -0.2 |
The age distribution in the EU is a growing concern, particularly in connection with pension and health expenditure and working life-time. While the accession of the 10 new Member States in 2004 has somewhat rejuvenated the EU population, it failed toreserve the trend of increasing old age dependency from 30% in the 1960s to 39% today in the EU-25.
This trend is expected t continue over the 2000-2030 period, with the share of people of 65 years and older in the total population increasing from 15% to 25% in the EU-15, and from 10% to 22% in the New-10.
The macro-economic assumptions
The macro-economic assumptions for Europe are moderately optimistic and entail challenging trade-offs in light of achieving sustainable economic development.
Average annual economic growth in the EU is expected to be 2.4% and 3.5% in the New-10. GDP assumptions are presented in the table 2.
Table 2. Income - GDP growth 2000 - 2030
GDP per capita (1000 Euro, year 2000) | ||||
Year | EEA - 31 | EU - 25 | EU - 15 | New - 10 |
2000 | 17.1 | 19.7 | 22.6 | 5.3 |
2010 | 21.3 | 24.8 | 28.0 | 7.8 |
2020 | 26.9 | 31.3 | 34.9 | 11.5 |
2030 | 33.7 | 39.3 | 43.5 | 15.9 |
Average annual growth rates (%) | ||||
2000-2010 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2.4 | 3.8 |
2010-2020 | 2.5 | 2.4 | 2.3 | 3.6 |
2020-2030 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 2.2 | 3.0 |
2000-2030 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.3 | 3. |
Technological developments
Technological progress is moderate but essential in key areas such as energy, agriculture and water, but no technological breakthroughs are assumed.
More detailed information concerning technology can be found in the European Environment Outlook N4/2005 (pp. 22-23)
Sectoral developments
The service sector is expected to retain its predominance in the European economy and be instrumental in sustaining economic growth. The base line scenario uses specific technological assumptions at the sctoral level, which directly affect most of European environmental concerns. The explanations of such assumptions are available in the European Environment Outlook N4/2005 (pp. 23-24)
The current CAP, assumed to be continued to 2020 in the baseline scenario, increases prices for animal products, both by border protection and market interventions, beyond the level which woul prevail in the abcence of common market organisations. This scenarion assesses the impact of an extended CAP reform on selected environmental indicators by assuming a continued liberalisation in the context of WTO negotiations for animal products market.
The effect of significant improvements in management practices for handling fertiliser has been assessed in this scenario, which therefore depics a more environmental-friendly prospective for the European agriculture sectors. Some sets of parameters have benn changed from the base year onwards:
The exchange rate in the baseline scenario is fixed at 0.9EUR/USD from 2001 onwards, in line with the latest European Commission assumptions, thus the Euro is weaker than current market conditions. This scenario assesses the possible effect of a stronger Euro of 0.75 EUR/USD. This would imply lower terms of trade for agricultural goods, but import tariffs and the level of administrative prices and quota regimes would dampen price transmissions between global and EU markets and stabiilse prices
The gap filling for modelling purposes includes nessesity for “completeness and consistency”. It is currently included in the COCO module.
Because the population data of CAPSIM differ from Eurostat population data which provide the bulk of the CAPSIM database, the projections have been expressed in index form (relative 2000) and smoothed with a Hodrick-Prescott filter to give a continuous series of projections of population growth. The same approach is used for (real) household expenditure.
Any outlook exercise involves a number of uncertainties and shortcomings, related for example to the methodological approaches used or the scope of the study. These information gaps and limitations are inherent in any assessment of possible futures, and this outlook would certainly have benefited from additional information covering some issues.
The main limiting factor in developing a comprehensive environmental outlook has been the lack of data, information or models covering some environmental issues.
At the time of filling of this specification the uncertainties related to the CAPSIM model were not found in the reference literature (additional research or consultation with the EEA expert is needed). The uncertainties related to the data sets used as model input are presented in the next section.
No uncertainty has been specified
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/fertilizer-consumption-outlook-from-eea/fertilizer-consumption-outlook-from-eea or scan the QR code.
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