This is the first policy brief released by PollinERA, a project under Horizon Europe that aims to protect wild pollinators in the European Union by improving pesticide risk assessments.
Introducing PollinERA: Protecting Wild Pollinators in the EU
The consortium of 11 members behind PollinERA has come together to address the decline of pollinator populations and reduce the harmful effects of pesticides. Their first policy brief marks an critically important milestone for the project, as it brings their scientific insights directly into the policy space. This format is designed to support decision-making and bridge the gap between research and action.
Reforming EU Chemical Risk Assessment: A Systems-First Approach
Titled “Reforming EU chemical risk assessment: from regulatory bottlenecks to systems solution”, this brief addresses one of pollinera’s core challenges - improving how environmental risks to pollinators are assessed. The current approach works in isolation, overlooks cumulative impacts, and bases decisions solely on binary “safe/unsafe” categories. The team behind this brief suggests a systems-first approach that prioritizes simulation and systems understanding before developing regulatory tools for Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA). This can lead to faster, cheaper, and more effective decision-making.
The policy brief is authored by Christopher John Topping, Noa Simon Delso, James Henty Williams, and Johan Axelman. Together, they used their expertise in pollinator research and environmental policy to present PollinERA’s findings in an accessible, practical, and relevant way for policymakers at the european and national levels.
Transparency and Scientific Foundation
To ensure transparency and provide a strong scientific foundation, the policy brief is supported by a technical evidence report that is openly available. The brief itself can be found in PollinERA’s project collection hosted by the open-science scholarly journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO). This collection will continue to be updated with new outputs as the project progresses.
In addition to RIO,research articles associated with PollinERA are also being published in Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal (FESMJ),titled “PollinERA – Understanding pesticide-Pollinator interactions to support EU Environmental Risk Assessment and policy”. These articles can also be found in the PollinERA collection on FESMJ.
The Beginning of the PollinERA Policy Series
The policy brief is just the first in a series that will be released throughout the project. Each brief will focus on a diffrent aspect of pollinator protection or pesticide risk assessment, helping to build a coherent and thorough set of policy-facing outputs.
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