IPol-ERA aims to advance the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of chemicals for insect pollinators. The project will address current risk assessment challenges related to systems approaches and ensure preparedness for future challenges. 

IPol-ERA develops a roadmap for action that identifies recent relevant research and risk assessment developments that might need consideration when conducting ERAs of chemical pesticides for insect pollinators. The IPol-ERA roadmap will also identify relevant ERA development needs for insect pollinators that require additional research input relevant for consolidating, updating and harmonising methodologies for the ERA of chemical pesticides for insect pollinators, and for developing and implementing a systems-based approach for the ERA for insect pollinators.

With an initial focus on chemical pesticides but a view to wider applicability to regulated products the IPol-ERA roadmap will procvide a guide for the transition process from single-substamce single-use ERA to a systems approach ERA for insect pollinators. This includes networks, projects, organisations and work in an expert working group format to solve the problems of data collection, collation, and mapping to provide the basis for the roadmap.

IPol-ERA will address all aspects of the risk assessment development areas (IPol-ERA Partnership, Ecological Consequences, Hazard and Exposure Characterisation, Multiple Chemicals ERA, Landscape and Population approaches and Developing the Systems Based approach), as well as identifying and mapping opportunities, cooperation and increasing communication and dissemination of the IPol-ERA approaches for EFSA and its partners.

The IPol-ERA project plan operates with 4 challenges:

• Toxicology and mulitples stressors
• Specific pollinator aspects within the ERA, Specific Protection Goals (SPGs) and spatiotemporal scales
• Transition to systems ERA and provision of tools
• Implementation and maintenance of pollinator monitoring schemes useful for ERA

SESS in IPol-ERA

SESS is lead partner of the IPol-ERA project, and leads:

• Task 1: Refinement of the problem formulation
• Task 3 Identification of areas requiring further development, and challenges and blockers
• Task 6 & 7: Completion of roadmap

To visit the EFSA IPol-ERA Theme (concept) paper click here