The European Commission presented on 24 January ‘A New Deal for Pollinators’ to tackle the alarming decline in wild pollinating insects in Europe, revising the 2018 EU Pollinators Initiative.
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Why do we need a revised European initiative on pollinators?
In Europe, around four in five crop and wild-flowering plant species depend, at least to some extent, on animal pollination delivered by thousands of insect species. The tangible benefits to the economy of pollinators are particularly visible in food production since animal pollination contributes to the EU’s agricultural output an estimated 5 billion per year at least. For some crops, the contribution of pollinators can amount to half of the market value of produce. Most of the essential benefits of pollinators, however, remain unquantified, such as their contribution to nutrition security, maintaining ecosystem health and resilience through the pollination of wild plants.
Yet pollinating insects have declined dramatically in diversity and abundance in the last decades, with many of them being threatened with extinction. This puts at risk ecosystem functioning, and consequently economic activities and human wellbeing which depend on it.
In 2018, the EU adopted its first EU Pollinators Initiative, which put in place specific policy tools to address pollinator decline, mobilised cross-sectoral action and made significant progress in monitoring pollinators. This initiative has complemented existing measures beneficial to pollinators under several EU policies, in particular the Birds and Habitats Directives, EU legislation on pesticides, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), cohesion policy, and research and innovation policy.
Today’s revision follows up on the review of progress in implementing the Pollinators Initiative from May 2021, which showed that, while the initiative remains a valid policy tool, significant challenges still need to be overcome to halt and reverse pollinator decline. It also follows up on the European Court of Auditors’ special report on EU actions to protect wild pollinators. This report identified gaps in key EU policies addressing the main threats to wild pollinators and pointed to the need to better integrate actions to protect wild pollinators in EU biodiversity conservation and agricultural policies and improve protection of wild pollinators from pesticides.
What is the magnitude of pollinator decline? How will it be monitored?
Europe and the world are confronted with a dramatic loss of wild pollinators. The population of around one in three bee, butterfly and hoverfly species is declining. Moreover, one in ten bee and butterfly species, and one in three hoverfly species, are threatened with extinction. While these figures already raise alarm bells, the full picture is not yet known. For example, for more than half of the bee species there is a lack of data to assess their status or trends.
In order to understand the full extent of the problem, track the impacts of policy actions, and assess whether policy targets were achieved, a robust system for monitoring of pollinators is critical. The revised EU Pollinator Initiative proposes the establishment of a comprehensive monitoring system. The Commission and the Member States are working on a monitoring methodology, building on technical options for an EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU-PoMS), and should finalise it. Member States should then implement the scheme in order to enable systematic collection of data. This will give us the full picture of the problem and provide information to assess whether pollinator decline has been reversed.
In addition, a robust EU-wide monitoring scheme will allow for the deployment of effective conservation and restoration measures for pollinator populations.
What are the main causes of pollinator decline?
The current scientific knowledge suggests that there is no one single driver of pollinator decline. The milestone report on pollinators issued by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) names land-use change, intensive agricultural management and pesticide use, environmental pollution, invasive alien species, pathogens and climate change as the main threats to pollinators. These often work in combination resulting in combined effects that exert strong pressure on pollinators.
How will the revised EU Pollinator Initiative address the impact of pesticides on pollinators?
The EU has already one of the strictest regulatory systems in the world concerning the approval of pesticides. With the revised EU Pollinators Initiative, the Commission will strengthen the current risk assessment of pesticides on bees with the aim to ensure that pesticides allowed in the EU do not pose a threat to bees. Where harmful impacts on pollinators are found, legal measures will be taken to restrict or prohibit the use of the pesticides concerned.
The Commission will also help ensure the implementation of Integrated Pest Management and improve the harmonised risk indicators in order to reduce potential impacts of approved pesticides on pollinators. The Commission will continue monitoring emergency authorisations granted by Member States for pesticides that are harmful to pollinators. Where emergency authorisations are not justified, the Commission will adopt decisions prohibiting Member States from repeating them.
Why does the revised EU Pollinator Initiative focus on wild pollinators?
The EU already has in place dedicated actions for domesticated pollinators, by supporting bee health and apiculture. These efforts tackle issues exclusive to honeybees (veterinary issues, beekeeping practices and others).
However, the overwhelming majority of pollinators are wild species. In Europe pollinators are mainly insects, in particular bees and hoverflies, but also butterflies, moths, some beetles and other fly insects. Bees are the most prolific pollinators. There are almost 2,000 wild bee species in the EU. By focusing on wild pollinator species, the EU Pollinators Initiative addresses challenges common to all pollinators. As such, it will provide a fundamental contribution to the health of honeybees as well, and will complement existing EU support to bee health and apiculture.
Species richness and abundance of pollinators underpin effective and stable crop pollination across time and space, and in this way ensure enhanced quantity and quality of crop yields. Diversity ensures that plants will be pollinated even in cases where certain species fail to perform. It enables resilience to the ever-changing environment and acts as a buffer in case of unforeseen or uncertain major changes, especially in the context of climate change.
What is the role of new EU Common Agricultural Policy in reversing the decline of wild pollinators?
The new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2023-2027 has an enhanced green architecture which will ensure:
- stricter conditions to be respected by farmers benefiting from CAP support, including non-productive areas, buffer strips, the protection of wetland, peatland and sensitive grassland etc.
- new eco-schemes, concentrating at least 25% of the budget for direct payments,
- a set of rural development instruments, including support for green investments such as precision farming, with also a requirement to dedicate an important part of the rural development envelope (minimum 35% including animal welfare).
The CAP Strategic Plans developed by Member States thus include a variety of remunerated actions for farmers and other beneficiaries with high potential for the protection of pollinators such as organic farming, beekeeping, agro-forestry, and other agro-ecological practices which have proved to be pollinator-friendly practices. Several Plans aim to create feeding areas for wild pollinators, such as flower strips, cultivation of annual melliferous plants, or other suitable landscape features.
Other commitments concern the establishment of non-productive areas on arable land in order to improve, among others, the status of pollinators and to increase the food supply for pollinating insects. The Plans may also aim to replace chemical plant protection products by biological pest control methods, contributing significantly to the protection of bees.
What is the international community doing about the problem and how will the initiative contribute to it?
Global efforts have been made to address the biodiversity crisis at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in December 2022. These global efforts must be accompanied by ambitious measures to protect and restore biodiversity at EU level, of which pollinators are an integral part.
Among the 2030 Global Targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global biodiversity framework target 11 calls for restoring, maintaining and enhancing nature’s contribution to people, including ecosystem function and services, amongst which animal pollination is mentioned specifically. The set of actions foreseen in the revised EU Pollinators Initiative are a central element of the EU efforts to achieve this target in relation to pollination in particular.
As early as 2000, the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity established an international initiative for the conservation and sustainable use of pollinators (the International Pollinators Initiative). In 2018, the EU joined a ‘Coalition of the Willing on Pollinators’ that was launched in 2016. Since then, the Commission has supported the objectives of this international coalition by sharing knowledge and experience on the implementation of EU actions on pollinators with other countries.
Communication on ‘A New Deal for Pollinators’ and Annex
EU Pollinators Initiative – Environment – European Commission (europa.eu)
Commission Staff Working Document Drivers of food security
