On 8 December, Safeguard held its first EU policy workshop "Urban greening for pollinators: from policy to practice" in collaboration with EuroCities and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. The goal was to identify how to integrate pollinator conservation objectives into urban greening plans. The interactive program included presentations and two break out sessions led by the Safeguard team, city representatives and pollinator experts.
Following a welcome by project partner Dr. Adam Vanbergen of INRAE and an overview of Safeguard, participants had the opportunity to dive deep into the policy context setting on the urban greening plans, presented by Benjamin Caspar from DG ENV. The discussions on what cities are already doing opened the floor to a presentation on how the city of Tallinn developed an integrated approach for its urban greening planning by Meelis Uustal and Anna Semjonova.
After Adam presented ‘Pollinators & Cities: framing the issue to inform evidence-based decisions’, the morning break out session began. In this session, the attendants took part in co-developing a decision making tool to help integrated urban planning for pollinators. The discussions revolved around the following questions:
What are the biggest threats to pollinators in cities?
How strong is the scientific evidence?
How to decide what will help pollinators most?
How to decide what needs to be done where and how much is needed?
Afterwards, Prof. Denis Michez (University of Mons) and Prof. Isabelle Dajoz (Sorbonne University) talked about the monitoring and assessment of pollinators in Paris. The afternoon break out session engaged the participants in a discussion on using pollinators as indicators of biodiversity in cities, addressing the following topics:
How to do a baseline survey of pollinators?
How to use pollinators as indicators?
How to set up and run monitoring?
What is the minimum effort needed to get meaningful results?
How much does it cost? Where can experts be found? What methods and techniques are available?
How to address knowledge gaps?
How can citizen science help?
The event provided a meaningful platform for discussion on how to integrate pollinator conservation into urban greening strategies.
Photo: Project partners at the "Urban greening for pollinators: from policy to practice" online Workshop