POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
simply reflect the natural heterogeneity in benefits, which in
turn inform these values in decision-making. The underlying
‘true’ value that we are trying to measure is likely to fluctuate
itself quite considerably because of changes in food demand
and supply, the development of technology and changes in
populations and their socio-economic characteristics, among
others. See Sections 3 and 4 for further discussion.
SECTION 1. NATURE AND
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE
ECONOMIC VALUATION OF
POLLINATION
6. Does valuation precludes
conservation because the use
values of natural systems are
usually lower than alternative
land uses?
In many instances, a particular use value of natural
ecosystems can be lower than alternative land uses. For
example, the opportunity cost of replacing more forest area
with coffee plantation can be higher than the pollination
services provided by the forest habitat to the coffee
plantations. In plain language, it may be possible for a
farmer to make more profit by expanding coffee area than
from the higher yields (tons ha -1 ) that result from pollination
services from forest next to plantation, thus creating
incentives to destroy the forest. Although a particular use
value of nature can be lower than alternative land uses,
the estimation of this value does not inherently promote
the destruction of nature. On the contrary, valuation may
illustrate that the long-term consequences of pollination
services lost may be greater than the value of new coffee
production by reducing benefits to other plantation patches.
Furthermore, the economic value of pollination services
is additive to the values of other ecosystem services that
forests provide in greater quantities than plantations, like
clean water and fresh air to humanity (i.e., use values
beyond crop pollination), and that conserving nature has
a value for society even without perspective of use (i.e.,
non-use value is high). In this way, by estimating the value
of pollination among other ecosystem services we add
reasons to the conservation of nature in addition to the
traditional, long-standing non-use values. As stated before,
an advantage of economic valuation is to make the benefits
and the decision-making process more explicit in regards to
nature. For example, a particular forest may have low private
use values (e.g., timber value) but high public use values
(e.g., recreation). Social decision makers might therefore
protect this forest even if its non-use values were low (e.g.,
no wildlife species of conservation interest). Therefore, a
key issue is; ‘valuation for who’? The potential value of a
field to the farmer is different to the potential value of that
field to society. The market reflects the preferences of
private individuals. Economic valuation allows us to look
at values in the round, both private and public, and shows
that the two are rarely identical. See Sections 3 and 5 for
further discussion.
1.1 On the meaning of economic
valuation
The concept of value is used to describe how agents
(typically individuals or, more broadly, societies) assign
or express their interest in things; the “things” are
objects, ideas, persons or anything else. Among multiple
frameworks, the economic concept of value aims to
measure and capture these values in largely quantitative
terms; the current significance that is explained within this
section. For an extensive analysis of economic valuation,
non-economist readers are referred to microeconomic or
environmental economics textbooks such as Just et al.
(2008), Hanley et al. (2013) or Perman et al. (2012).
1.1.1 Understanding the meaning of
economic value: utility and scarcity
Economics has been defined as “the science, which studies
human behaviour as a relationship between ends and
scarce means which have alternative uses” (Robbins, 1932).
As such, economic value reflects the utility and scarcity of
“things”.
Utility refers to the satisfaction that agents obtain from the
consumption of goods or services (a simple distinction is
that services are not depleted by use, while goods can be).
It is usually accepted that agents’ utility is subjective and
depends on their preferences. The social welfare is the sum
of the utility gains and losses of each agent in society. The
utilitarian perspective advocates choosing options that offer
the greatest social utility or welfare. However, consumers
do not derive utility directly from pollinators, but they can
gain utility from consuming the products of the pollination
process, such as fruits or aesthetically valuable flowers
(Fisher et al., 2009).
Scarcity is not necessarily a measure of physical amounts,
but of the tension resulting from the lack of supply of usable
resources relative to the wants of the people (demand).
Scarcity is at the core of the allocation issues. The scarcity
of pollinators can lead to a decrease of pollination services
and therefore a reduction of the utility of consumers of
these benefits. Properly informed, economic valuation of
pollinators provides relevant indicators of the relative utility
and scarcity of the diverse resources offered through the
process of pollination that may contribute to human welfare.
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4. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF POLLINATOR GAINS
AND LOSSES