"Overview
Pollination by animals is important to the outputs of 75% of global crops plants, ranging from widely grown arable rotation crops such as sunflower and oilseed, to high-value fruits and vegetables such as apples and tomatoes (Klein et al., 2007). The global area of these crops has grown substantially since 2001 and many countries are becoming more dependent on pollination services (Aizen et al., 2019). Although some pollination services are provided by managed insects, such as the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), the majority are provided by wild animals, such as bees, flies and bats (Garibaldi et al., 2013; Kleijn et al., 2015). Despite their importance to global agriculture, there is mounting evidence of pollinator decline across the world, driven by pressures from human activities, particularly land use change, the poor use of agrochemicals, and climate change (Dicks et al., 2021). Faced with these declines, there has been global concern over the impacts that pollinator declines could have on the economy, human health and wellbeing and the stability of natural ecosystems that provide other ecosystem services (IPBES, 2016).
Measuring the benefits and values of pollinators in economic terms has been proposed as a means to support pollinator conservation efforts in four ways (Breeze et al., 2016): 1) to illustrate the scale of economic benefits of pollination services to different actors that may not fully understand their importance, 2) to evaluate and incentivise action by supporting cost-benefit or other such economic decision analyses, 3) to highlight the economic vulnerability and resilience of different areas to pollinator declines and 4) to measure, monitor and value pollinator natural capital stocks over time. To date, no study has reviewed pollination as part of a whole food system.
Here, we review the economic links between pollinators and the wider food system, quantify the importance of pollination to national food systems and crop trade, outline the data required to measure and value pollinator natural capital, critically assess the existing methods for economically valuing pollination to the food system and identify key research priorities to better value the importance of pollination in the food system."
Source: Breeze T.D., Garratt M.P.D., Senapathi D., Willcox B.K. and Potts S.G., October 2022
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