What do we mean by ‘citizen engagement’ on the topic of pollinators? 

We use ‘citizen engagement’ as an umbrella term covering all kinds of ways in which citizens can be meaningfully involved in the work of public institutions that shapes our societies and individual lives. Even broader, ‘participatory processes’ relate to all instances where citizens come together with other actors – whether public administrations, scientists, NGOs, private companies, associations – and together develop solutions to issues of common concern. In both instances citizens are considered as individuals with relevant knowledge, who aim to have agency over what happens in their lives and communities, capable of deep reflection on issues under consideration and so of taking part in decision-making. In this approach, anyone, given sufficient time and right tools, can actively contribute to addressing the challenges related to pollinators decline. 

This is very different from education and awareness rising where citizens are informed (one-way communication) about the importance of pollinators, things that harm them or choices we can make in our daily lives to protect them. It’s also different from consultations, voting, petitions and referenda, which are about collecting individual opinions and preferences, lacking the deliberative dimension (examples include the Bavarian petition on pollinators and agriculture or the European Citizens' Initiative ‘Save farmers and bees’). Finally, it’s also different from citizen science, where citizens provide essential support in collecting data on pollinators, for instance through registering observations of pollinators. In all these, the role played by citizens is quite limited and defined by public administrations, NGOs or research institutions, leaving little initiative to citizens themselves. 

So how exactly can citizens contribute? 

• Issue identification: Citizens can participate in identifying and defining the most urgent problems, including mapping the needs, expectations, vulnerabilities, concerns and risks, defining aspirations and visions, as well as anticipating the consequences of policies and programmes. In this context citizens have unique knowledge about the issues from their own experience.
• Co-creation: Working together with other actors, citizens can bring their own ideas to work on finding solutions, developing prototypes and planning projects. They can also be involved in testing these in real-life conditions. (See Blueprint 4)
• Decision making: Citizens can participate in decision making on which course of action to take by pointing out preferences and priorities, considering trade-offs, allocating budget or developing policy recommendations. (See the Young Citizens Assembly)
• Implementation: Taking decisions and developing policies is often only a start, and citizens can contribute to finding ways to implement these measures in concrete places in such a way as to best fit with the local context, including their needs and limitations, making sure that possible negative impacts are addressed early on.
• Evaluation: Citizens can monitor, provide feedback and evaluate how well programmes and policies are being implemented, especially in terms of how these are experienced on the ground.
• Enriching debate: Participatory processes can also be used to promote a nuanced public debate when discussions of citizens that explore diverse points of view, opinions, values and evidence are made public. (See Blueprint 1) 

Why do citizen engagement on the topic of pollinators? 

There are general reasons for running citizen engagement processes that apply to virtually all issues: it brings citizens and institutional actors (whether public, private or civil society) together, increasing trust and understanding; proposals are developed taking into consideration a wider range of factors and concerns, better predicting possible negative effects of any intervention; people tend to take more ownership of projects which they helped develop. Besides these pragmatic concerns, there is also a normative point about democracy – that people should be involved as much as possible in decisions that impact them. 

But it is worth taking a moment to reflect how these general reasons play out in this specific case. Moreover, there are specific reasons for involving citizens in policymaking and nature conservation linked to pollinators: 

• Decline of pollinators is connected to things that are part of the daily lives of citizens. Two key examples here are food production and the use of green spaces in cities. In this context questions and trade-offs with respect to health, aesthetics, access to infrastructure, cost and availability of food appear. As citizens are experts in their daily life – e.g., the ways we use green spaces or what influences our food choices – their input is crucial to create interventions that have a chance of becoming well-embedded in daily lives.  
• Pollinators connect to many contentious issues with high political and economic stakes as well as many uncertainties. E.g., the direction and extent to which we may want (or not want) to reshape the continent-wide system of agricultural production is something that will have far-reaching consequences for everyone, with many effects impossible to predict. This is a situation which requires a broad public discussion that will reveal the diversity of concerns, needs, vulnerabilities and interests while building on a broad range of ideas for finding solutions.  
• Pollinators also sit (or fly) at the crossroads of many wider environmental issues under the triple planetary crisis of climate change (changing distribution of species), pollution (chemicals but also light pollution) and biodiversity decline (their fundamental role in stability of many ecosystems). This way pollinators become an excellent entry point into discussions of those wider issues, which, again, can only be addressed through significant changes in many aspects of our lives. 
• Most pollinating insects are not charismatic species, like polar bears, whales or orangutans. And they don’t live in far-away nature reserves. They inhabit the same spaces as we do, where, not uncommonly, they provoke unease, annoyance, disgust and even fear. A familiar situation: You’re enjoying a picnic in a park, when, one by one, wasps arrive attracted by food, landing on sandwiches, entering soda bottles and flying uncomfortably close to your face. To understand how we can constructively share places with insects is a topic that potentially implies cultural changes, thus calling for broad public involvement.