This new five-year roadmap aims to help and protect pollinators (bees and hoverflies) and thereby enhance wider biodiversity and ecosystem services in Ireland.

When the first All-Ireland Pollinator Plan was published in September 2015, Ireland became one of the first countries in Europe to address pollinator declines. By providing simple, evidence-based actions to help provide pollinators with food, shelter, and safety, the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan set out to reverse these declines in order to ensure the sustainability of food production; avoid additional economic impacts on agriculture; and protect the health of the environment. You can learn more about the AIPP framework by reading this PROGRESS article from July 2020.

PROGRESS and the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan

In the first round of stakeholder engagement and international exchange of the PROGRESS project, the AIPP was identified as an Irish Good Practice for ‘promoting the measurement of the costs and benefits of ecosystem services derived from land use’. It was presented to project partners and stakeholders at the 1st International Thematic Seminar in March 2020 (Dr Owen Douglas, Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly). Following peer-review, the AIPP ranked first out of the nine Good Practices which were proposed and partners expressed strong interest in transferring aspects of the AIPP in their own regions. The AIPP was then included in the 1st International Training Workshop in June 2020 where Dr Úna Fitzpatrick, AIPP Co-Ordinator, spoke about AIPP successes and lessons learned so far.

Policy impact

As a direct result of this engagement between PROGRESS and the AIPP team, a new action has been included in the new AIPP which recognises the potential for regional structures to support implementation with local government, and also to promote the plan to local, regional and national stakeholders through involvement with EU projects such as Interreg PROGRESS. The action directly facilitates the implementation of key Regional Planning Objectives relating to biodiversity and ecosystem services contained in the ‘Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy for the Eastern and Midland Region’, the target policy instrument of our Irish partner, the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly’ (EMRA).

Implementation and ongoing engagement

While the new AIPP is being launched today, implementation is already taking place! In addition to outputs from the 1st phase of thematic exchange on the PROGRESS project (i.e., international exchange events and inclusion of the AIPP in the 1st project Handbook of Good Practice and on the Interreg Europe website), the PROGRESS communications team in CREAF, Barcelona – in collaboration with EMRA – is developing a short video introducing the AIPP which is targeted at a European audience. In addition, a number of PROGRESS partners are in the process of developing a proposal for a Pilot Action based on the AIPP. Furthermore, the EIP-AGRI Protecting Farmland Pollinators project – which is aligned with the AIPP farmland pollinator guidelines published in 2017 – was presented as a Good Practice to PROGRESS partners at an online seminar exploring ‘innovative financial and marketing mechanisms for payment for ecosystem services’ on Monday, 22nd March 2021. The engagement continues!

• To access and learn more about the new AIPP, click here.