Europe’s environment, biological diversity and landscape have to a large extent been shaped by agricultural land use. Today agricultural practices have both positive and negative impacts on the environment and its components. Because of the diversity in environmental, biological and geomorphological factors in Europe the impacts from agriculture vary by region. European policies, most notably the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), have been developed and implemented to ensure that agricultural harm to the environment is reduced or compensated. In order for the policies and measures to be most effective it is important to customize and prioritize their implementation to the characteristics of individual regions of Europe. For this reason it is important to know which areas of Europe are more sensitive to environmental impacts from agriculture than others. In other words, where are the areas of highest risk for environmental damage from agriculture?

The current report contains the final product of a project that has aimed to answer this question: EnRisk, or ‘Environmental Risk Assessment for European Agriculture’. The report, written by a team of international environmental experts and conservationists, describes an innovative methodology and the results of a three-year study (finalized in 2004) that applied agri-environmental indicators and European datasets to identify the main environmental risk areas in Europe. It covers soil erosion, nutrient enrichment, pesticide use and their integrated risks for biodiversity and landscapes.