People’s livelihoods and culture are intimately linked with pollinators around the world. All the major world religions have sacred passages that mention bees.
- Lynn Dicks
Delegates from almost 100 national Governments have gathered in Kuala Lumpur to discuss how to address the threats facing animal pollinators: the bees, flies, birds, butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles and bats that transport the pollen essential to the reproduction of much of the world’s crops and plant life.
It is the first time the global community has gathered on this scale to focus on the preservation of the small species that help fertilise more than three quarters of the leading kinds of global food crops and nearly 90% of flowering wild plant species.
A report on pollinator species produced over two years by an international team of 77 scientists, including Cambridge’s Dr Lynn Dicks, has been adopted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). IPBES has 124 member Governments.
The report is the first assessment ever issued by IPBES, and the first time that such an assessment has brought together multiple knowledge systems comprehensively, including scientific, and indigenous and local knowledge. It will highlight the threats to animal pollinators, and the major implications of these species’ declines for the world’s food supply and economy.
But the report also details the ways that pollinator power can be used for the benefit of biodiversity, food security and people: by harnessing natural relationships between plants and animals to improve agricultural yields and strengthen local communities.
“It is incredible to see international Governments coming together to discuss the problem of pollinators in this way,” says Lynn Dicks, from Cambridge University’s Department of Zoology.
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Image: Carpenter bee (Xylocopa flavorufa) visiting coffee flower (Coffea arabica)
Credit: Dino J. Martins/Nature Kenya
Reproduced courtesy of University of Cambridge
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