Abstract
Animal pollination can impact food security since many crops depend on pollinators to produce fruits and seeds. However, the effects of projected climate change on crop pollinators and therefore on crop production are still unclear, especially for wild pollinators and aggregate community responses. Using species distributional modeling, we assessed the effects of climate change on the geographic distribution of 95 pollinator species of 13 Brazilian crops, and we estimated their relative impacts on crop production. We described these effects at the municipality level, and we assessed the crops that were grown, the gross production volume of these crops, the total crop production value, and the number of inhabitants. Overall, considering all crop species, we found that the projected climate change will reduce the probability of pollinator occurrence by almost 0.13 by 2050. Our models predict that almost 90% of the municipalities analyzed will face species loss. Decreases in the pollinator occurrence probability varied from 0.08 (persimmon) to 0.25 (tomato) and will potentially affect 9% (mandarin) to 100% (sunflower) of the municipalities that produce each crop. Municipalities in central and southern Brazil will potentially face relatively large impacts on crop production due to pollinator loss. In contrast, some municipalities in northern Brazil, particularly in the northwestern Amazon, could potentially benefit from climate change because pollinators of some crops may increase. The decline in the probability of pollinator occurrence is found in a large number of municipalities with the lowest GDP and will also likely affect some places where crop production is high (20% to 90% of the GDP) and where the number of inhabitants is also high (more than 6 million people). Our study highlights key municipalities where crops are economically important and where pollinators will potentially face the worst conditions due to climate change. However, pollinators may be able to find new suitable areas that have the potential to improve crop production. The results shown here could guide policy decisions for adapting to climate change and for preventing the loss of pollinator species and crop production.
Highlights
One of the key challenges addressed by the World Summit on Food Security is the necessity for countries to properly address the impact of climate change in order to achieve food security [1]
We evaluated the impact of climate change in each municipality where these crops are produced as well as the total crop production, the gross domestic product (GDP) per municipality and the number of inhabitants
Considering the importance of pollination in crop production, we investigated the potential impact of climate change on the distribution of pollinator bees for some Brazilian crops
Summary
Food security can be affected by climate change because it may change crop growth and production [2], impacting crop price and the food market and exacerbating hunger, land abandonment, migration and urbanization [3]. Climate change is expected to lead to a 14% decline in per capita cereal production by 2030 [4], affecting tropical areas [5]. In Africa and South Asia, 8% yield losses are expected across all crops by 2050 [6], with developing countries being more vulnerable [7], potentially enhancing the decline in crop productivity, in countries that currently have a high prevalence of hunger [2]. Brazilian agricultural production is expected to be affected by climate change. Between 2 and 5 billion US$ is the projected loss to be suffered by 2070, with coffee-growing areas showing a 30% decrease in the southeastern region [8]
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