POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
and scarcity of all goods and services. However, in the real
world, prices do not usually indicate the values. Ideally,
economic valuation studies should estimate values; yet,
several methods tend to estimate prices or price variations,
which are used as indicators of value (e.g., market price of
renting honeybee colonies can be used as a proxy of the
economic value of honeybees). See Section 1 for a more
detailed explanation.
2. Does economic value mean
monetary value?
for buying and selling meadows. It recognises a common,
natural asset that should be protected for the benefit of
the overall welfare of those affected. Valuation allows the
importance of such an asset to be compared with the
interest for society of alternative actions or policies that
degrade it. Therefore, using techniques to estimate the value
of a resource to society can help its members to better
understand the scope and scale of the benefits received
from the resource. Furthermore, economic values and other
valuation systems (see Chapter 5) are not mutually exclusive
and can be combined using multi-criteria analyses. See
Section 1 for further discussion.
212
4. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF POLLINATOR GAINS
AND LOSSES
Though the question is often addressed in these terms,
it has to be reformulated because “monetary value” has
no clear meaning. If the question is “should the economic
values necessarily be expressed in monetary terms?” the
answer is “not necessarily”, but for practical reasons and
communication purpose, it is generally the case. Economic
values can be expressed in any currency. Nevertheless,
monetary units have practical advantages, for example, as
a common unit across highly diverse costs and benefits and
it is the same unit that other investments (including in nonenvironmental
policy) are assessed in. Therefore, monetary
units are generally used in valuations, although this tends
to reinforce the ambiguity between values and prices. In
monetary terms, economic valuation methods include
market prices, when the benefits relate to existing markets
(e.g., crop production), and non-market values, when
relating to benefits not directly traded on markets (e.g.,
supporting aesthetic wild flower diversity). Non-monetary
indicators can also be of great importance, for example,
given that demands for agricultural products are constantly
increasing from a growing and more affluent population,
it is important to maintain the regenerative nature of
agroecosystems, such that food production and diversity,
and livelihood are improved for farmers. These important
considerations are indeed difficult to express in monetary
terms. See Sections 1 and 2.4 for further discussion.
3. Does the valuation of nature
and ecosystem services imply
privatization or commodification?
Economic evaluations are usually motivated by goals such
as decision support, policies design or raising awareness
among public decision makers of the importance of certain
issues. The intention is not privatizing or commodifying
public assets, which is often considered both impractical
and unethical, but to recognise their values and include
them explicitly in public or social decision-making. For
example, the value of a river as a provider of clean water
for a town does not imply a market for buying and selling
rivers. Similarly, the value of a meadow as a provider of
insect pollination for nearby crops does not imply a market
4. Does economic value include
non-use values?
Non-use values have been progressively introduced in
economic valuation of natural assets in order to get more
significant indicators of the total importance of the multiples
reasons explaining why people value nature’s services.
Economic valuation thus includes methods to quantify both
use values (e.g., crop production due to insect pollination)
and non-use values (e.g., the value people place on the
existence of pollinators). Indeed, valuation theory places
a great emphasis in capturing both of these types of
economic value. See Section 1 for further discussion.
5. How much uncertainty is
associated with economic values?
The uncertainty is an important limitation affecting the
precision of economic valuation methods related to crop
production. For example, the underlying empirical data
linking pollination to yield are sparse and do not adequately
represent variation among crop varieties, years, or places,
particularly for the widely grown crops. Unfortunately,
valuations have often been widely communicated without
explaining this uncertainty (whether or not it is in the
discussion text of the scientific papers). The fact that the
estimation of values share uncertainty, as is true of most
estimates in any scientific field, does not mean that the
process and use of valuation is inherently flawed. If the
valuation process is not made explicit, the value given to
natural assets or ecosystem services may be zero, a value
that we can be certain is wrong. It is important that values
should be communicated to policy makers and the public
with corresponding estimates of uncertainty, for example,
by providing ranges of values instead of a unique value. We
also identify in this chapter several biological knowledge
gaps that directly affect valuation uncertainty. Thus, though
variations among valuations may be the effect of technical
failure, they may also reflect the fact that the valuation of
the same service in different circumstances has no a priori
reason to be the same. Moreover, these differences can