International
Climate Initiative (IKI)

Conservation of pollinator diversity for enhanced climate change resilience

As of: January 2020

Objective and activities

The project protects in 7 countries pollinator diversity directly, by diversified capacity development, political mainstreaming and a global stewardship. It introduces and mainstreams TEEB-based, economically self-supporting "Farming with Alternative Pollinators"(FAP). FAP identifies the economic value of habitat enhancement for farmers and uses the additional incomes as incentives for farmers and policymakers to mainstream pollinator protection across sectors. The project develops the first pollinator inventory for the West Asia and North Africa-region (WANA). Morocco is the benchmark country (development of manuals, DVD, assessment to describe the value of pollination, broad outscaling, political mainstreaming etc.). Partners from the six participating countries will be trained and will conduct small supervised FAP trials in their countries to promote mainstreaming of pollinator protection by policy workshops in these countries.

State of implementation/results

• In October 2017, the kick-off event of the project took place in Morocco.
• The collection and identification of pollinators has started in Morocco: so far about 930 bee species, 145 hoverfly species and more than 130 butterfly species have been identified, but many hundreds more species are suspected. Morocco is one of the most biodiverse countries in terms of the diversity of its pollinators.
• The regions of Morocco with the highest risks of pollinator loss or with the highest loss of butterfly diversity were identified. Six PhD students were selected and have started their studies.
• A cost-effective cross-sectoral policy and action approach for pollinator protection was developed.
• On May 10, 2019, Morocco became the first Arab country to join the "Coalition of the Willing on Pollinators" for pollinator protection.
• The project has collected knowledge on pollinators, pollination and pollinator protection from different stakeholder groups in Morocco (and partly also in Turkey) for the implementation of target group specific capacity building.
• The project has a partnership agreement with ONCA, the national extension service, and is currently training national trainers, who in turn are training Moroccan farmers.
• Two main components of the project (income generation through FAP; cross-sectoral policy approach) were presented at the COP CBD 2018.
• The project enjoys broad media attention and has its own website mel.cgiar.org/…

Further Links: