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How do we help pollinators? This assessment has some good ideas.
Pollinators Vital to Our Food Supply Under Threat | IPBES
Pollinators Vital to Our Food Supply Under Threat | IPBES
A growing number of pollinator species worldwide are being driven toward extinction by diverse pressures, many of them human-made, threatening millions of livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food supplies, according to the first global assessment of pollinators.
However, the assessment, a two-year study conducted and released today by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), also highlights a number of ways to effectively safeguard pollinator populations.
The assessment, titled Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production and the first ever issued by IPBES, is a groundbreaking effort to better understand and manage a critical element of the global ecosystem. It is also the first assessment of its kind that is based on the available knowledge from science and indigenous and local knowledge systems.
"The good news is that a number of steps can be taken to reduce the risks to pollinators, including practices based on indigenous and local knowledge," said Zakri Abdul Hamid, elected Founding Chair of IPBES at its first plenary meeting in 2012.
The safeguards include the promotion of sustainable agriculture, which helps to diversify the agricultural landscape and makes use of ecological processes as part of food production.
Specific options include:
Maintaining or creating greater diversity of pollinator habitats in agricultural and urban landscapes;
Supporting traditional practices that manage habitat patchiness, crop rotation, and coproduction between science and indigenous local knowledge;
Education and exchange of knowledge among farmers, scientists, industry, communities, and the general public;
Decreasing exposure of pollinators to pesticides by reducing their usage, seeking alternative forms of pest control, and adopting a range of specific application practices, including technologies to reduce pesticide drift; and
Improving managed bee husbandry for pathogen control, coupled with better regulation of trade and use of commercial pollinators.