Impacts of degraded pollination ecosystem services on global food security and nutrition

Abstract

Nutrient resource loss in human food due to an ecological shock in terms of the depletion of insect pollination services may become a global concern. Inspired by the international trade theory, we use a bioeconomic model to estimate the impact of crop price changes on nutrient consumption as crop supply and demand vary under different scenarios of pollinators decline. Our findings show that the average global crop price will increase by about 187% if pollinators go extinct at a global scale and worldwide nutrient consumption from crops may decrease in all scenarios studied, exacerbating food insecurity where food shortage already exists. We argue that the consequences of pollinators decline on human well-being is not only a matter of the crop production quantity in exporting countries but also the global demand of nutrients contained in pollinator-dependent crops as their supply decline.