Consortium

University Of Reading (UREAD)

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

About: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) is the only Swedish university fully devoted to natural and social science research and education concerning natural resource management with strong links to stakeholders in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and environment. Three prominent, closely collaborating departments are engaged in VALOR in a highly interdisciplinary team. The Department of Ecology is possibly the largest aggregation of research resources in Sweden in the area of applied ecology, covering all major aspects of natural resource management in terrestrial ecosystems, agriculture and forestry. The Department of Economics holds internationally acknowledged expertise in agricultural and natural resource economics and business. The Department of Urban and Rural Development includes strong relevant expertise in social sciences related to environmental communication and rural development. SLU hosts a number of national centres with particular relevance to VALOR, including the SLU Future Food, MISTRA Food Futures, Competence Centre for Chemical Pesticides, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, and Centre for Biological Control.

Within VALOR: SLU leads the overarching WP1 on multi-actor engagement and co-development, including tasks underpinning all other WPs in multi-actor processes. SLU conducts discourse analysis with key EU and focal region actors to understand the role of and knowledge about pollinators in policy formation and governance. This work feeds into co-developed pollinator-relevant scenario narratives, decision tools and demonstration case studies. SLU leads the building in WP4 of farm-level economic production functions for pollination services, and contributes to assessing implementation costs of measures to halt and reverse pollinator declines. SLU leads a task in WP5 exploring the role of pollinators in global trade networks. SLU contributes to several additional tasks concerning ecological, social, and economic consequences of current and projected land use change and for dissemination.

Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (ALU)

Jagiellonian University (UJ)

About: The Kraków University, the predecessor of UJ, is the oldest higher education institution in Poland and one of the oldest in Europe. It was founded on 12 May 1364 by the Polish king Casimir the Great. The University was re-founded by King Vladislaus Jagiełło on 26 July 1400 thanks to the contribution of Queen Jadwiga, who left a considerable portion of her private estate to the University in her last will. Hence, today it is called the Jagiellonian University. Currently, the Jagiellonian University comprises fifteen faculties, including three medical ones, and now forms the Medical College. The Faculty of Biology is the most prestigious biological faculty in the country consisting of the Faculty`s Educational Centre and three research institutes: the Institute of Botany and the oldest Botanical Garden in Poland, the Institute of Environmental Sciences (researchers from both Institutes are involved in various tasks of VALOR), and the Institute of Zoology and Biomedical Research. The Botanical Institute of the Jagiellonian University was founded in 1913 as the first modern institute in Poland specialising in botany. It has produced several thousand papers in various areas of botany, and it has become one of the important botanical centres in this part of Europe. The Institute of Environmental Sciences became a European Union Centre of Excellence in 2002 through the project “Implementing basic and applied research in environmental sciences for the benefit of local communities.” This project facilitated numerous international collaborations and enhanced research infrastructure.

Within VALOR: Two separate research groups are involved in VALOR: the pollinator research group at the Department of Plant Ecology, Institute of Botany and the Socio-Environmental Research Team, Institute of Environmental Sciences. The first - being the leader of the UJ research team - is involved mainly in the empirical data collection on pollination at the Polish Focal Site (mostly Task 3) and cooperation with the UJ Campus Living Lab, while the latter is involved in the socio-environmental research and workshops (mostly Task 2 and 4.)