At 2.00 pm on Thursday 21st February Pippa Bartolotti of the Wales Green Party will be handing in a petition of 40,440 signatures to John Griffiths, Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development, asking him to outlaw the use and sale of neonicotinoid pesticides in Wales. These products have been increasingly implicated in the decline of honeybees and wild bees over the past decade.
Simultaneously, Natalie Bennett, Green Party Leader, will hand in a similar petition to Westminster. This is the first time a social media petition has been hand delivered to a Minister in this way, and to further protect the environment it will be handed in on a memory stick, saving almost 10000 sheets of paper.
In France, Italy and other countries these insecticides have already been restricted. In Britain and the USA however, their use continues.
Malcolm Higginbottom, Chairman of Good is Planet Earth, said: "This petition is a timely step in the right direction. The hand in will be prior to The European Food Standards Agency meeting on February 25 2013, which follows a Dutch delegation calling upon the European Commission to take action. A number of member states support the proposal, including France, Poland and the Czech Republic.
"Italy has introduced restrictions on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, Slovenia has already imposed a full ban, and some national retailers in the UK including B&Q and Home Base have acted to remove neonic related products from their shelves amid growing public concern of pollinator collapse and potential food shortages. "
A study commissioned by Friends of the Earth finds that having to pollinate crops without the help of bees would cost the UK almost £2 billion a year in higher food prices. This huge annual bill amounts to what it would cost to hand-pollinate crops if bees died out in the UK .
Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party Leader added, " In parts of China they are hand pollinating hundreds of thousands of fruit trees. All the natural pollinators were killed more than 10 years ago because of indiscriminate use of pesticides, and they have not returned. It is a disaster now, and an even greater disaster will follow if we continue to use these deadly pesticides. We call upon the Government of Wales to ban these products immediately."
Lord Jones of Cheltenham said in a debate in the House of Lords (January 10 2013), the "population decline of bees and other pollinators needs to be treated as a National Emergency."
"A study led by Stirling's Professor David Goulson showed that growth of bee colonies slowed after the insects were exposed to "field-realistic levels" of imidacloprid, a common neonicotinoid insecticide. The production of queens, essential for colony survival, declined by a massive 85 per cent in comparison with unexposed colonies used as a control.
"In another study, a French research group also investigated the impact of a different neonicotinoid, thiamethoxam, on the number of bees able to make it back to the colony with food. Calculations showed that cognitive impairment of forager bees at sub-lethal doses was bad enough that colonies would be severely compromised.
"BeeTheChange, a Facebook based Social awareness group, run by Goodisplanetearth.org have submitted evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee and other consultations, calling on the UK government to take preventative action to protect pollination species."