The next time you see a bee buzzing around, remember that much of the food we eat depends significantly on natural insect-mediated pollination – the key ecosystem service that bees and other pollinators provide.

Without insect pollination, about one-third of the crops we eat would have to be pollinated by other means, or they would produce significantly less food. Up to 75% of our crops would suffer some decrease in productivity. Undoubtedly, the most nutritious and interesting crops in our diet (including many key fruits and vegetables), together with some crops used as fodder in meat and dairy production, would be badly affected by a decline in insect pollinators; in particular, the production of apples, strawberries, tomatoes, and almonds would suffer.

Climate change

Many of the predicted consequences of climate change, such as increasing temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns and more erratic or extreme weather events, will have impacts on pollinator populations. Some of these changes could affect pollinators individually and ultimately their communities, becoming reflected in higher extinction rates of pollinator species.

Any progress in transforming the current destructive chemical-intensive agricultural system into an sustainable farming system will have many associated benefits on other dimensions of the environment and on human food security, quite apart from clear benefits to global pollinator health.

In the short to medium term, there are specific issues that society can begin to address straight away, in order to benefit global pollinator health. The benefits could become evident almost immediately. Based on analysis of the current science on global pollinator health, NatureOps believes that eliminating exposure to pesticides with the potential to harm bees is a crucial step in safeguarding not only managed and wild bees, but also the high ecological and fiscal value of natural pollination.