The University of Eastern Finland Law School is involved in an EU project investigating how society can anticipate and prepare for the threats posed by pollinator decline. Academy Research Fellow Mirella Miettinen at the Law School leads a work package examining how five key supply chains – food and micronutrients, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biomaterials and biomass energy – are dependent on pollinators.
The work package led by the University of Eastern Finland also explores how a toolkit to be developed in the project can be used within supply chains to mitigate the threats caused by pollinator decline.
The BUTTERFLY project, short for Mainstreaming Pollinator Stewardship in view of Cascading Ecological, Societal, and Economic Impacts of Pollinator Decline, has been granted more than seven million euros in Horizon Europe funding. The project is coordinated by Professor Jeroen van der Sluijs at the University of Bergen in Norway, and the multidisciplinary consortium includes a total of 24 partners from 13 different countries. The University of Eastern Finland’s share of the funding amounts to 239,065 euros.
The project will create models and datasets to assess and forecast the monetary and non-monetary value of pollinators, while also developing stakeholder networks from the local to the EU level. The project will establish a network of six Living Labs, where different stakeholders can engage in intensive collaboration to raise awareness of the risks associated with pollinator decline, as well as of the opportunities to combat the pollinator crisis by proactive restoration measures.
The partners of the BUTTERFLY project include not only universities and research institutes, but also a museum, an NGO, a national body for agriculture and food, and two consultant companies. The funding secured from the EU enables extensive international and transdisciplinary collaboration as well as an exploration of the human dimensions of pollinator decline.
The four-year project will be launched in March 2025.
For further information, please contact:
Academy Research Fellow Mirella Miettinen, mirella.miettinen(at)uef.fi, tel. +358 50 472 0510
Press release by the University of Bergen