First consultation for the planned international stewardship for pollinator protecting agriculture

Stewardships like organic farming certification systems or fair production schemes are market-based instruments for better social and environmental standards. The planned stewardship for pollinator protecting agriculture can additionally create synergies with other labels, in particular with certification systems for organic farming. We would appreciate your participation in this first consultation round. Please feel encouraged to further circulate this blog for wide participation by different stakeholder groups and from all continents. Support us by your feed back to develop a good certification scheme.

Pollinators are under heavy stress, in particular in agricultural lands. Farmers can significantly contribute to pollinator protection, e.g. by Farming with Alternative Pollinators (FAP), seeding wildflower strips (WFS), planting corridors or flowering hedgerows, leaving strips fallow, reducing chemicals, providing nesting sites and materials etc.

However, how can consumers encourage and support farmers in such good practices? As more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction, joint efforts of farmers, trade and consumers for the protection of wild bees, honeybees, flies, butterflies, wasps and other pollinating species are overdue. By now, there are only a few stewardships for pollinator protection with limited range, e.g. in USA and France.

Therefore, The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Lands (ICARDA) develops an international stewardship. Currently, we are developing our standard based on ISEAL guidelines.

We start now the first consultation round. Your comments and suggestions will be documented and used to enhance the standard.

Please contribute to this consultation round, so we can later start with a good standard  to make the stewardship operable, establish the council, train certifiers, communicate the standard to farmers, trading companies and consumers and establish a certified trade chain, so you can be sure that fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices, oil seeds or stimulants with the label WPP (We Protect Pollinators) definitely will have been produced in a pollinator friendly way.

The first consultation phase is open for 3 months and ends by March 31st, 2020 (CET). You can download the draft standard here and complete the consultation by following this link and your comments will be electronically stored. 

Keywords: Stewardship, ISEAL, Consumer, Producer, Trade, Pollinator protection

Acknowledgement

The development of this stewardship is funded by the Federal German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) through the International Climate Initiative (IKI). We acknowledge the support of IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation during the preparation phase.­