Swiss beekeepers want protecting pollinators to be enshrined in the constitution
Beekeeping and environmental organisations want to enshrine the protection of bees and other pollinating insects in the constitution. They consider current measures to be insufficient in the face of the decline in these essential species.
BienenSchweiz, the Société Romande d’Apiculture, the Federazione Ticinese di Apicoltura, the Future 3.0 Foundation and Friends of Nature Switzerland announced the launch of a people’s initiative in a press release published on Sunday. The collection of signatures is due to start on World Bees Day on May 20. The initiative, which is currently being examined by the Federal Chancellery, aims to enshrine the objective of guaranteeing pollination in the Swiss Constitution.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
According to the initiators, almost half of the 600 or so species of wild bee in Switzerland are threatened and 59 are already extinct. Insect biomass is estimated to have fallen by more than three-quarters in three decades. Yet around 84% of agricultural crops in Europe depend on insect pollination. In Switzerland, the economic value of this contribution is estimated at up to CHF479 million a year.
More
How Swiss direct democracy works
The initiative does not set out any specific requirements, but does require the government and cantons to guarantee the pollination of cultivated and wild plants and to promote the diversity of pollinators. The organisations believe that, despite several parliamentary interventions in recent years, federal measures remain insufficient.
Adapted from French by AI/ac
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
External Content
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.