Where is the value in valuing pollination ecosystem services to agriculture?

Current national and global scale monetary valuation of pollination services do not accurately estimate the contribution of wild pollinators to agricultural production. First, ecosystem (wild) pollination services remain largely bundled with those of managed pollinators. This problem is compounded by the fact that the dependency of crops on pollination, a key parameter used in current valuations, does not reflect variation in pollinator density, crop cultivars and growing conditions that exist in practice. Over half of the 153 billion of estimated global pollination service value in 2005 is based on estimates of pollinator dependency from crops with fewer than three field studies that measure actual levels of pollinator activity and corresponding fruit set. The resulting uncertainty may be most distorting when applied to widely-planted intensive oilseed crops. Furthermore, current valuations are underpinned by simplistic assumptions regarding the likelihood of pollinator decline and the impact on agricultural prices. Although efforts to motivate wild pollinator protection through their ecosystem service value remain highly circumscribed by conceptual and empirical limitations, we identify the need to go beyond technical solutions and develop a critical framework that could account for why pollinator conservation has come to be predominantly justified in these terms to begin with. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.