IUCN, Office for Central Europe

The title of this trilingual (Polish, English and German) publication refers to the theme of an international conference held in Poland in March 2002. Organic farming was presented at the conference as the most sustainable form of active environment conservation and an important element of rural development. Included in the document is a collection of papers presented at the conference with the final paper being the "Warsaw Declaration".

This report assesses the influence of agricultural policy and regional development on the biodiversity of three selected countries: Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, and proposes directions for change. It aims at influencing policy-making in selected issues related to the agriculture sector to better conserve biodiversity in agricultural landscapes in Europe. The policy areas were world and inter-European trade; vertical integration – “from seed to shelf”; and the integration of biodiversity into the rural development programmes in Central Europe.

The aim of this international seminar was to discuss tools for ecological planning in the context of preparing for implementation of the EU Natura 2000 network, and to explore the possibilities for integrating nature conservation objectives into sectoral policies such as agriculture. This publication presents the agreed recommendations of the seminar, the guest papers and brief national overviews.