POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
sustainability of pollination services should be evaluated
regarding, not only its impact on consumption path or the
welfare of a typical individual, but in order to maintain these
life opportunities.
1.2 Linking economic values with
pollination
The economic literature systematically links valuation with
decision, public awareness and policy-making. Indeed, the
conceptual framework of economic valuation is designed for
collecting and organizing information toward hierarchizing
and selecting choice options (for instance, agriculture policy
or biodiversity strategy; Costanza et al., 2014). However,
there apparently are broader motives behind economic
valuations, and some authors have suggested that the link
between valuations and decision-making was more related
to general advocacy than to providing technical information
(Laurans et al., 2013; Laurans and Mermet, 2014).
replacement, see Allsopp et al., 2008) and the few published
results appear quite sensitive to the valuation method.
The design and assessment of cost-effective policies
and action can be of real importance, but enlighten only
a framework for a least-cost approach for some policy
target (cost-efficiency) without demonstrating that it is the
best social choice (the gain are not necessary larger than
the costs). For example, the market for colony rental for
almond orchards in California (Klein et al., 2012) might be the
simplest way to meet the needs of large-scale monocropping
landscapes. However, the pollinator shortage might also
be solved if agricultural landscapes were to become more
heterogeneous (Hussain and Miller, 2014), if producers
switched to crops less dependent on pollinators or even
developing artificial pollination techniques, but this is in most
cases highly speculative. Economic valuation can assist in
this process by identifying not only the most cost-effective
solution but the fairest and most sustainable ones as well.
1.2.1 Understanding the importance of
what is at stake
There is growing evidence of insect pollinator decline
in many regions and its consequences (e.g., fruit and
vegetable production decline in quantity and/or quality)
are occurring, but building indicators of these changes
is difficult and the result can be controversial or of limited
social impact if expressed in a metric understood only by
scientist and experts. The first interest of estimating the
value of pollination service or the cost of pollinator decline
is certainly to raise awareness on their importance for our
societies, and to offer a clear and simple argument to help
policy-makers to make choice about the opportunity to
design and implement appropriate measures. Estimating
the cost of pollinators’ decline in economic terms allows
the comparison of the result to other issues and, more
importantly, to the cost of the remedies that can be
proposed to this problem. In many cases, a precise study of
the local variations in value indicators will be more helpful for
decision making than global information.
SECTION 2. METHODS FOR
ASSESSING THE ECONOMIC
CONSEQUENCES OF
POLLINATOR GAINS AND
LOSSES
A number of methods have been used throughout the
published literature to quantify the economic consequences
of pollinator gains and (most often) losses. The following
section reviews the principle details of each of these
methods, focusing on what it measures (price or value
and of what specifically), an overview of the methodology
involved, it’s strengths and weaknesses, under what
situations it is suitable to use and what data is required.
Key examples of each method (some of which are reviewed
in detail in Section 7) are provided for interested readers.
Table 4.2 summarises these methods for ease of reference.
2.1 Price Aggregation
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4. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF POLLINATOR GAINS
AND LOSSES
1.2.2 Defining hierarchies, priorities and
choices
Comparing the cost of declining pollinators to the cost
of implementing alternative options in behaviours and
solutions is clearly a difficult task. The main difficulty is
usually to assess the cost of moving away from the current
policies and behaviours. However, drawing a clear picture
of alternative practice and organization can be a challenge
as well. There is in fact little literature that directly offers
estimates of such change (for an analysis based on cost of
2.1.1 Aggregate crop price
What it Measures: The total market price of animal
pollinated crop production.
Methodology: This method assumes that production of
all animal pollinated crops would cease in the absence of
pollination services and therefore equates the total sale price
of all crops that benefit from animal pollination, with the
value of pollination services themselves.