Pollinators are crucial for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Despite their widely recognised benefits, many of the pressures on pollinators continue unabated, leading to localised but significant service deficits in crop pollination and concerns that other communities may be approaching tipping points as key species decline. VALOR aims to co-develop and demonstrate a systems-based approach for understanding, measuring and responding to changes in the societal and economic benefits provided by pollinators.
Its sister project, Butterfly, another Horizon Europe project, aims to enhance society’s capacity to appraise, foresee and respond to the threats posed by the cascading impacts of pollinator decline (‘butterfly effects’).
The project aims to achieve its goals through four pathways:
- Developing tools for pollinator knowledge, engagement and decision support.
- Creating Living Labs, serving as test beds for fact-based solutions and policy interventions.
- Educating stakeholders at all levels.
- Working on guidance and science-policy interaction for better coordination, synchronisation and coherence.
The Butterfly is built around nine Work Packages, focused on collecting knowledge about pollinators, recognising the impacts of their loss on the ecosystems and the economy and designing tools to adapt to the changes. Butterfly project’s consortium includes 25 partners from across Europe, one of them being part of VALOR’s partners - Jagiellonian University in Kraków / Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie (Poland).
To increase its impact and ensure the effectiveness of the results, Butterfly works in close synergy with VALOR, its sister project. The two projects share several joint deliverables, including two joint policy briefs and dissemination events, along with social media cross-posting. This collaborative work aims to connect the researchers and stakeholders from both projects and thus to improve the uptake of their results.
The Butterfly project had its kick-off meeting in Paris on 3-4 April 2025, at Norway House on the campus of the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, learn more about it here.
To never miss the project’s activities, follow Butterfly on Bluesky, LinkedIn and Facebook.
