Aware of the importance of pollinators for the North American region and of their observed decline worldwide, the Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)—composed of the highest federal-level environmental authorities from Canada, Mexico and the United States—approved a series of activities on pollinator conservation under the 2019–2020 project, “Strengthening Regional Pollinator Conservation to Secure Local Benefits.”
As part of this project, the CEC Secretariat commissioned a state of knowledge on pollinators conservation in North America to inform and advance collaboration on pollinator conservation in the region. Further, the CEC convened two participatory workshops with government representatives and stakeholders from the three countries to identify knowledge gaps and priority areas for collaboration, while bringing attention to the socio-ecological benefits of pollinators and human dimension considerations.
This report presents the findings of the state of knowledge and the outcomes of the workshops and informal exchanges. After a brief overview (section 1), it offers a summary of the current understanding of species’ diversity, population trends, and drivers of change (sections 2 & 3), including the high-level results of a quantitative assessment of observation records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (see Box 1 and Appendices).
It highlights the ecosystem services supported by pollinators and explores how social sciences and human dimensions can contribute to pollinator conservation in North America (section 4). Each section identifies possible knowledge gaps and provides key messages in plain language.
Finally, the report identifies priority conservation actions that would benefit from greater regional collaboration and provides recommendations on integrating human dimension considerations in pollinator conservation work (section 5).
