Project title: Restoring Pollinator habitats across European agricultural landscapes based on multi-actor participatory approaches
Project acronym: RestPoll
Project Reference: 101082102 — RestPoll — HORIZON-CL6-2022-BIODIV-02-two-stage
Programme: HORIZON
Type of Action: HORIZON Innovation Actions
Project Duration: 01.10.2023 – 30.09.2027 
Granting Authority: European Research Executive Agency  
EU Grant: 7 118 102.93 EUR

Target groups:

1. Researchers and students of social and natural sciences;
2. Farming/land use sector (farmers, administrative people, and other land users, agricultural schools/extension specialists, beekeepers using the agricultural landscape to produce honey); Business actors along the agricultural food chains (grower-supplier-processor-retailer); Society at large
3. Local communities and indigenous people 
4. All online-oriented stakeholders and society at large interested in green infrastructure;
5. Health professionals with a special focus on illnesses related environmental degradation, pollution, and human nutrition;
6. Fruit and seed industry, retailers;
7. Journalists and politicians as key actors for societal transformations;
8. Partners of other pan-European projects with a key focus on partner projects in this call

Grant holder: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany) 
https://uni-freiburg.de/ 

Coordinator and General Manager: Alexandra-Maria Klein
Prof. of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology

Email: [email protected] 

Partnership:

• Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
• Technische Universität München, Germany
• Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany
• International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM-IAMM), France
• Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Formation de l’Enseignement Agricole, France
• Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine
• Lund University, Sweden
• Aarhus University, Denmark
• Ecological and Forestry Applications Research Centre, Spain
• University of Thessaly, Greece
• Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary
• Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, France
• Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
• Nodibinajums Baltic Studies Centre, Latvia
• Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology (IRTA), Spain
• Wageningen University, Netherlands
• General Confederation of Italian Agriculture (Confagricoltura), Italy
• Bukki Nemzeti Park Igazgatosag, Hungary
• Association de Développement, d'Aménagement et de Services en Environnement et en Agriculture du Ger, France
• Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
• HVR Public Affairs / Public Relations BV, Netherlands

Project summary:

RestPoll is a highly transdisciplinary project aiming to provide society with tools to reverse wild pollinator declines and to position Europe as a global leader in pollinator restoration. RestPoll will, together with stakeholders ranging from individual land managers to governments, co-design, evaluate, and refine measures and cross-sectoral approaches to restore pollinators and their services. The RestPoll consortium combines the expertise of natural and social scientists, NGOs, businesses, and ministries. Stakeholders along the food value chain will be engaged through newly developed participatory approaches at diverse social, ecological, and political scales. Central to RestPoll is the establishment of a Europe-wide network of pollinator restoration case-study areas and Living Labs (LL), which are unique hubs for experimentation, demonstration, and mutual learning. RestPoll aims to position Europe as a global leader and set the future agenda for pollinator restoration worldwide. The transdisciplinary RestPoll consortium will develop, test, evaluate and refine cross-sectoral pollinator restoration approaches to conserve biodiversity and to benefit nature and society. To restore wild pollinator diversity and their vital pollination services, RestPoll will co-design measures with different stakeholders (ranging from individual land managers to governments) at various spatial scales (field, farm, landscape, European scales), in agricultural landscapes that are dominated by intensively managed crops or grasslands. Our holistic approach, informed by cutting-edge transdisciplinary research, will integrate stakeholders and actors at multiple levels as well as natural and social science disciplines to engage in participatory planning and development of new business models. Learning outcomes will be disseminated by regional to European multi-actor partners and collaborators, which will ensure impact beyond the end of the project 

Objectives:

We have identified 18 case-study areas in 14 European countries with multiple restoration measures, consisting of existing agro-environmental schemes and novel, prospective schemes such as payments for pollination/ecosystem services, in agricultural landscapes to conserve biodiversity in general and wild pollinators in particular. Restoration activities in the case-study areas are partly already set up by stakeholders in cooperation with RestPoll researchers or vice versa. In a joint participatory approach, restored plots and control sites will be selected from the different areas and expanded or adapted, aiming for the most optimal design to achieve successful pollinator restoration outcomes across European agricultural landscapes and to test the value of co-designing restoration measures

Expected Impacts:

1. Biodiversity decline, its main direct drivers and their interrelations are better understood and addressed.
2. Biodiversity and natural capital are integrated into public and business decision-making at all levels for the protection and restoration of ecosystems and their services.
3. Europe builds competitive sustainability and tackles climate change and natural disasters through the deployment of nature-based solutions.
4. The interrelations between biodiversity, health, food, soil, water, and climate are better known.
5. Practices in agriculture and forestry support biodiversity and the provision of other ecosystems services.
6. Approaches for enabling transformative changes in society.
7. Biodiversity research is interconnected: To enhance the ambition of national to European policies, RestPoll will collaborate with other national, pan-European and international partners and projects. RestPoll will actively foster joint activities with other pan-European projects/initiatives to combine and harmonise data and generate new approaches, syntheses and incentives during and after the project end. This will include long-term biodiversity monitoring across multiple habitats and joined training of species identifications.

Partners from Ukraine:
Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University 
http://chnu.edu.ua/ 

Responsible person: Dr. Mariia Fedoriak, Head of the Department of Ecology and Biomonitoring

Email: [email protected]