POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
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4. ECONOMIC VALUATION OF POLLINATOR GAINS
AND LOSSES
Data Required: Measures of all relevant assets and their
distribution within a region at a spatially explicit scale.
4.3.3 Resilience stock
What it Measures: The monetary value of resilience (the
capacity of the pollinator community to withstand and
recover from pressures that affect its capacity to provide
benefits).
Methodology: This method assesses the long-term
trade-offs and benefits from different managements on
service availability by considering resilience (Section 4.1.)
as a separate asset that can be affected by pressures and
mitigations (Maler et al., 2009). The impacts of a pressure
or mitigation on resilience can be measured as a change
in the marginal shadow values of the service (Bateman et
al., 2011). Shadow values represent the long-term benefits
of ecosystem services from natural capital to society,
including their potential future values. The shadow value
of an ecosystem service can be estimated by applying a
discount rate (see Section 3.2.2.3) to estimates of the future
value of the ecosystem services generated by the capital
asset; e.g., the value of pollination services now and in the
future assuming similar land use. The resilience of pollination
services to crops and wildflowers will be influenced by
the abundance and diversity of key functional pollinators
(Winfree and Kremen, 2009). Higher abundances of key
species and a higher diversity of potential service providers
will increase resilience by increasing the community’s
capacity to adapt to change (e.g., Brittain et al., 2013).
Thresholds for resilience, the point at which an asset would
be unable to return to its original state if a pressure were to
degrade its functioning, will therefore be the point at which
a pollinator community is unable provide services following
a reduction in a key species or group. These thresholds are
presently unknown, although ecological network analyses
may provide a starting point for future evaluation.
Strengths: The economic value of resilience as a stock
inherently captures the value of insurance; the mitigating
effect of resilience upon producer wellbeing, which can
be estimated separately utilizing specialized models
(Baumgartner and Strunz, 2014). As a capital asset it can
be readily incorporated where monetary markets for crops
are absent, with the shadow value simply becoming the
projected stock of the resilience asset.
Weaknesses: This method is highly influenced by the
discount rate applied to create the shadow value. In the
case of pollination services, this will depend on both the
projected future benefits and, for crop pollination, the
discounted price of the crop in future periods. These
prices are likely to be very difficult to project and discount
rates can be very difficult to estimate (Section 3.2.2.3). By
applying this method to a single ecosystem service, this
method may over-state the impacts of pollinator gains
and losses in isolation. In reality, ecosystem services and
inputs may compensate for one another (e.g., pollination
services increasing yield in certain oilseed rape, Brassica
napus, varieties in the absence of fertilizer – Marini et al.,
2015), necessitating a complex, whole systems approach
that considers multiple services in a single resilience stock.
Insurance values are inherently linked to user preferences for
risk aversion, such as the maximum amount of pollinatordependent
yield loss a producer is willing to accept before
switching crops (e.g., Gordon and Davis, 2003), which
should be estimated separately to extrapolate insurance
value (Baumgartner and Strunz, 2014). Most critically,
TABLE 4.8
Summary of methods and their strengths and weaknesses for assessing the economic value of uncertainty, risk, vulnerability
and resilience
Portfolio
methods
Sustainable
livelihoods
framework
analysis
Resilience
stock
Method Strengths Weaknesses
Statistical models are used to
construct an optimal portfolio of assets
(pollinators or habitats) that minimize
variance in expected benefits
A range of complementary capital
assets are quantified and summed into
an index to identify regional vulnerability
to a proposed change.
Resilience is quantified as a stock that
can be quantitatively degraded like
other capital assets
- Account for varying degrees of
producer risk aversion
- Readily incorporated into long term
management and spatial planning
- Does not require the presence of
monetary markets valuation studies
- Applies at all spatial and temporal
scales
- Can be used without adaptation for
any policy scenario
- Does not require the presence of
monetary markets
- Captures the value of service
insurance
- Often highly complex to estimate
- Requires substantial and in depth
ecological and economic data, ideally
from production function analyses to
capture changing risks
- Assumes that assets do not interact
with one another
- Pollination cannot always be
substituted for and many substitutes
are imperfect
- Weighting of the index can be difficult
and introduce assumptions.
- Many indicators are only abstract
representations of adaptability
- Monetization is highly dependent
upon discount rates which are difficult
to estimate accurately
- Does not account for service
substitution
- Difficult to extrapolate from source site