Safeguard is organising its first EU policy workshop “Urban greening for pollinators: from policy to practice” in collaboration with EuroCities and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. The event will be held online on 8 December 9:30-14:30 (Brussels time, UTC+1). 

The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 announced that cities with over 20,000 inhabitants are expected to develop Urban Greening Plans. Urban greening plans will set cities’ strategies to support biodiversity, including pollinators. In addition, they will be an important vehicle to deliver on other relevant EU BDS commitments such as “eliminating chemical pesticides in sensitive areas such as EU urban green areas”. Urban greening plans will need to pay particular attention to pollinator monitoring to assess the state and trend of pollinators in the municipality, which will be critical for the implementation of conservation activities and adequate planning. Last October, the Commission released the EU Urban Greening Platform which hosts a comprehensive guiding document, a toolkit as well as other resources for the development and implementation of urban greening plans. 

The aim of the Safeguard interactive urban greening workshop is to discuss how to integrate pollinator conservation objectives into urban greening plans. This workshop has been designed and will be most relevant to actors involved in city planning. 

It will will include interactive break out sessions on:

• Morning session: Co-developing a tool to do strategic urban planning for pollinators 
• Afternoon session: Discussion on using pollinators as indicators of biodiversity in cities

Register for the workshop here.