PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Climate change has multiple implications for organisms’ phenology (natural seasonal cycles), including desynchronisation between pollinators and flowering periods of plants. This can significantly affect many pollinators’ populations and distribution. There is increasing evidence that climate change trends (especially when combined with other pressures) may increase extinction risk for several pollinator species, and reduce the resilience of locally and globally threatening ecosystems, rural economies and food security. Homogenous and fragmented landscapes worsen climate change impacts on pollinators, preventing their adaptation to changing conditions. This calls for climate adaptation measures that enhance landscape connectivity and habitat heterogeneity at multiple spatial scales, locally increasing the variety of micro-climatic conditions, and including natural and agricultural areas.
OBJECTIVES
The key objective of LIFE BEEadapt is to implement a comprehensive climate change adaptation strategy for pollinators, considering climate change as the key driver of pollinator decline, although not ignoring the multiple and interacting pressures challenging their survival. The project team will create ecological corridors, help land managers and planners to enhance relevant green infrastructure and ecosystem services, and provide the basis for replicating the approach in other locations.
RESULTS
Expected results:
- Enhanced ecological functionality and connectivity in target areas, due to the implementation of green infrastructure (GI), specifically the creation of new core and buffer areas and ecological corridors between them, and the provision of practices and actions to implement GI and the identification of possible solutions to the obstacles slowing down GI implementation.
- Establishment of a governance model for strengthening the administrative capacity regarding climate adaptation at all governance levels involved in land planning and management (region, provinces, municipalities), both public and private bodies, and asking them to collaborate in the management and design of GI and to increase their responsibility and awareness towards adaptation measures.
- Promotion through a Consultation Board and local pacts among concerned public authorities (i.e. region, provinces, municipalities and national parks) of the BEEadapt model of action and intervention logic. With this mechanism the concerned authorities will further direct future replications of the project approach by sharing: (i) the criteria for ecosystem services payments in the target field of action through CAP, regional funds and grants; and (ii) the criteria for inserting pollinator-oriented measures in planning tools.
- Development and transfer to selected target areas, and widely disseminate to other Italian regions, a protocol for pollinator-friendly adaptation based on the LIFE BEEadapt results.
- The protocol will cover: i) the enhancement of GI through their design, implementation and maintenance; ii) the definition and implementation of land management and agronomic practices under the CAP implementation framework, able to support pollinator feeding and sheltering; and iii) the provision of a set of regulatory criteria and measures to ensure the integration of pollinator-friendly GI implementation into regional planning tools.
