This is the first policy brief by the Horizon Europe project PollinERA, whose aim is to improve pesticide risk assessments, in order to protect wild pollinators across the Europe Union.
The 11-member PollinERA project consortium, brought together to reverse pollinator population declines and reduce the harmful impacts of pesticides, has released its first policy brief.
This marks an important stepping stone for the project, bringing PollinERA’s scientific insights directly into the policy space in a format designed to support decision-making.
It has been acknowledged that the current approach works in isolation, overlooks cumulative impacts and bases decisions solely on binary “safe/unsafe” categories.
What the PollinERA-derived policy brief suggests is a systems-first, tools-second approach that can deliver faster, cheaper and effective decision-making by prioritising simulation and systems understanding before developing regulatory tools for Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA).
The brief is authored by project coordinator Christopher John Topping, Noa Simon Delso, James Henty Williams and Johan Axelman. Together, the team used their expertise in pollinator research and environmental policy to present PollinERA findings in an accessible, practical and relevant way, dedicated for those who shape policy at European and national levels.
To ensure transparency and provide a strong scientific foundation, the policy brief is supported by a technical evidence report, also made openly available.
The policy brief, technical supportive documents, as well as key scientific resources and publications are conveniently and publicly accessible in the PollinERA’s project collection, hosted in the open-science scholarly journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO). Being ‘a living’ space, the collection will be further enriched as new valuable outputs are generated over the course of the project.
The policy brief marks the beginning of the PollinERA Policy series: a collection of policy briefs that will be released throughout the project.
Each brief will focus on a different aspect of pollinator protection or pesticide risk assessment, helping to build a coherent and comprehensive set of policy-facing outputs.
Pensoft will lead the communication, dissemination and exploitation activities of the Horizon Europe project, which aims to reverse pollinator population declines and reduce impacts of pesticides.
Plant protection products (PPP), also known as pesticides, have been identified as one of the primary triggers of pollinator decline. However, significant knowledge gaps and critical procedural limitations to current pesticide risk assessment require attention before meaningful improvements can be realised. The functional group is currently represented by only one species, the honey bee, which does not necessarily share other species’ biological and ecological traits.
Coordinated by The Social-Ecological Systems Simulation (SESS) Centre, Aarhus University and Prof. Christopher J. Topping, PollinERA (Understanding pesticide-Pollinator interactions to support EU Environmental Risk Assessment and policy) aims to move the evaluation of the risk and impacts of pesticides and suggestions for mitigationbeyond the current situation of assessing single pesticides in isolation on honey bees to an ecologically consistent assessment of effects on insect pollinators.
This will be achieved through the development of a new systems-based environmental risk assessment (ERA) scheme, tools and protocols for a broad range of toxicological testing, feeding to in silico models (QSARS, toxicokinetic/toxicodynamic, and ALMaSS agent-based population simulations).
Using a strong stakeholder co-development approach, these models will be combined in a One System framework for risk assessment and policy evaluation including an international long-term monitoring scheme for pollinators and pesticides.
The One System framework builds on the recent roadmap for action on the ERA of chemicals for insect pollinators, developed within the IPol‐ERA project, funded by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The framework will expand the ERA tools currently used for honey bees to include wild bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies.
With an overall goal of reversing pollinator population declines and reducing the harmful impacts of pesticides, for the next four years, PollinERA will follow four specific objectives:
Fill ecotoxicological data gaps to enable realistic prediction of the source and routes of exposure and the impact of pesticides on pollinators and their sensitivity to individual pesticides and mixtures.
Develop and test a co-monitoring scheme for pesticides and pollinators across European cropping systems and landscapes, developing risk indicators and exposure information.
Develop models for predicting pesticide toxicological effects on pollinators for chemicals and organisms, improve toxicokinetic/toxicodynamic (TKTD) and population models, and predict environment fate.
Develop a population-level systems-based approach to risk and policy assessment considering multiple stressors and long-term spatiotemporal dynamics at a landscape scale and generate an open database for pollinator/pesticide data and tools.
Between 17 and 18 January 2024, experts from various realms of knowledge – from pollinator ecology, pesticide exposure and toxicological testing, to stakeholder engagement and communications – gathered in Aarhus, Denmark, to officially launch PollinERA. The two-day event seeded fruitful discussions on the project’s specific objectives, mission, methodology, outcomes and expected results.
With more than 20 years of experience in science communication, Pensoft is leading Work Package 6: Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation, that will ensure the effective outreach of PollinERA to its multiple target audiences. Based on the tailor-made communication, dissemination, exploitation and engagement strategies, Pensoft will provide a recognisable visual identity of the project, along with a user-friendly website, social media profiles, promotional materials, newsletters, infographics and videos. Pensoft will also contribute to the stakeholder mapping process and the organisation of various workshops and events.
PollinERA’s coordinator Prof. Christopher J. Topping (The Social-Ecological Systems Simulation Centre, Aarhus University) gave a warm welcome during the kick-off meeting of the project in Aarhus, Denmark.
Coordinated by Prof. Denis Michez (University of Mons), WildPosh aims to significantly improve the evaluation of risk to pesticide exposure of wild pollinators, and enhance the sustainable health of pollinators and pollination services in Europe.
Collaboration mechanisms between the PollinERA and the WildPosh projects include joint communication activities and events, joint data management strategy and alignment of activities to solidify the quality of final outputs.
Prof. Denis Michez (University of Mons), the coordinator of PollinERA’s sister-project WildPosh, presented the missions, objectives and methods, as well as the similarities, differences and collaboration potential between the two projects at PollinERA’s kick-off meeting in Aarhus, Denmark.
“It is fantastic that the European Commission puts so much effort into preserving wild pollinators and the countless benefits they bring to our society! The One System framework will hopefully become a fundamental part for the environmental risk assessment of chemicals for insect pollinators. I am really looking forward to implementing this insightful project, in close collaboration with its sister project WildPosh, where Pensoft is leading the dissemination efforts as well.”
says Teodor Metodiev, Principal Investigator for Pensoft at both PollinERA and WildPosh.
The PollinERA consortium comprises partners from eight European countries that represent a diverse range of scientific disciplines spanning from pollinator ecology, pesticide exposure and toxicological testing, to stakeholder engagement and communications.
