POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
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1. BACKGROUND TO POLLINATORS,
POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
1.6 POLLINATORS,
INDIGENOUS AND LOCAL
KNOWLEDGE AND A GOOD
QUALITY OF LIFE
(see Chapter 5)
Throughout the world, local communities and indigenous
people’s knowledge systems about the functioning of
complex ecosystems guide how they live and draw their
livelihoods (Berkes, 2012). As a result, societies have
developed unique biocultural associations with pollinators,
both managed and wild, through diverse management,
social and farming practices (Quezada-Euan et al., 2001;
Stearman et al., 2008; Lyver et al., 2015). Local people,
however, have also had a major destructive influence on
biodiversity (Diamond, 2005) and hence on associated
pollinators. Ostrom (1990) established that institutional
arrangements that support common property systems
of governance are critical determinants of whether or not
sustainability results from local management systems.
Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) therefore importantly
includes knowledge of social institutions and governance
systems as well as environmental observations,
interpretations and practices (Berkes and Turner, 2006;
Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2013). The contribution of
ILK systems to pollination’s role in ensuring nature’s
benefits to people and good quality of life is assessed in
Chapter 5, guided by the following working definition (c.f.
Berkes, 2012):
Indigenous and local knowledge systems (ILKS) are
dynamic bodies of social-ecological knowledge,
practice and belief, evolving by creative and adaptive
processes, grounded in territory, intergenerational
and cultural transmission, about the relationship
and productive exchanges of living beings (including
humans) with one another and with their environment.
ILK is often an assemblage of different types of
knowledge (written, oral, tacit, practical, and scientific)
that is empirically tested, applied and validated by local
communities.
Understanding the interlinkages between pollinators and
ILK-based management systems is important because
substantial parts of the global terrestrial surface, including
some of the highest-value biodiversity areas, are managed
by ILK-holders (5.1). Pollinators in turn enrich livelihoods
through additional income (e.g. beekeeping for honey
production throughout the temperate and tropical world),
food (e.g., honey hunting and gathering in Africa and Asia),
medicine (e.g., human and veterinary remedies), ceremony
and ritual (e.g., hummingbirds in Mesoamerica) and oral
traditions (e.g., legends and songs in Oceania) (Buchmann
and Nabhan, 1996; Silltoe, 1998; Nakashima and Roué,
2002; Mestre and Roussel, 2005). ILK is attuned to
conditions of environmental change, for example through
use of seasonal indicators to trigger crop-planting and
honey-harvesting (Silva and Athayde, 2002; Berkes and
Turner, 2006; Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2013; Césard and
Heri, 2015) (5.2). In the Petalangan community in Indonesia,
bees are managed to nest up to four times a year in the
sialang trees through seasonal patterns of planting and
harvesting, in accordance with flowering of corn, rice, and
during the slash and burn period that opens the forest to
start planting (Titinbk, 2013).
Modern science and indigenous knowledge can be mutually
reinforcing (Tengö et al., 2014). For example, there are
parallels between folk taxonomy of Abayanda indigenous
people living around Bwindi National Park in Uganda, and
modern systematics (Byarugaba, 2004).
By their practices of favoring heterogeneity in land-use as
well as in their gardens, by tending to the conservation of
nesting trees and flowering resources, by distinguishing the
presence of a great range of wild bees and observing their
habitat and food preferences, many indigenous peoples
and local communities are contributing to maintaining an
abundance and, even more importantly, a wide diversity in
insect, bird and bat pollinators (Chapter 5).
1.7 POLLINATOR
BEHAVIOUR AND
INTERACTIONS
Not all pollinators are equally efficient at servicing the
pollination requirements of crops and wild flowers.
Although honey bees, especially Apis mellifera, are the
most frequently managed pollinators (Figure 4), other
insect pollinators are more effective than the honeybee
in some crops. For example, a common early-foraging
sand bee, Andrena cerasifolii, and the blue orchard bee,
Osmia sp., can pollinate some crops more effectively
per flower visit than the western honey bee (Bosch and
Kemp, 2001; Krunic and Stanisavljevic, 2006; Mader et
al., 2010; Sheffield, 2014). The oil-collecting bee, Centris
tarsata, is more effective than honey bees at pollinating
cashew, Anacardium occidentale, in northeast Brazil (Freitas
and Paxton, 1998). In New Zealand some flies, native
bees and bumble bees are equally efficient pollinators of
rape, Brassica rapa, as honey bees (Rader et al., 2009),
but honey bees can be managed more easily. Pollinator
behaviour can also be influenced by the presence of other
pollinators, impacting fruit set through complementary
activities (Garibaldi et al., 2013; Melendez et al., 2002,
Pinkus-Rendon et al., 2005; Brittain et al., 2013b; 2006).