PollinERA has released its first policy brief, offering evidence-based recommendations to improve environmental risk assessment for pollinators.

Horizon Europe project PollinERA, which aims 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.

The brief titled “Reforming EU chemical risk assessment: from regulatory bottlenecks to systems solution” was developed to address one of the core challenges identified in the project: The need to improve the way environmental risks to pollinators are currently assessed. The current approach works in isolation, overlooks cumulative impacts and bases decisions solely on binary “safe/unsafe” categories. What 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).

“Reforming EU chemical risk assessment: from regulatory bottlenecks to systems solution” was created by project coordinator Christopher John Topping, Noa Simon Delso, James Henty Williams and Johan Axelman. They brought together 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, available for viewing here. Both the policy brief and technical supportive documents are available on the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal, in PollinERA's open-access collection, as well as on PollinERA’s website.

This publication 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.

A full policy brief is available here.