Bee pollination from the perspective of the Ecosystems Services Approach (ESA)

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the benefits of bee pollination from the perspective of the Ecosystems Services Approach (ESA). The article included a traditional theoretical review related to ASE and Ecological Economics and a systematic review of publications indexed to the Web of Science platform, that had done some kind of evaluation of pollination by bees, wild or managed. This review took place through four phases: search for articles, screening, extraction of information and synthesis of results. During the first phase, 182 publications were identified until September 2020. After subsequent stages and full reading of the works, there were selected 45 that responded to the problematic proposed in this research. The results indicated an expressive increase of studies published in the last two decades, overall, on the last ten years (86,6%). Of the identified benefits, 84,4% of the studies associated the pollination to the rural agricultural productivity, meanwhile 8,88% of the studies evaluated the significance of this ecosystems service to the wild plant’s reproduction and 6,66% to the urban agriculture. Seeds by fruit is the most direct measurement of this ecosystem service, being directly connected to the metrics of fruit size and quality. From the 45 analyzed studies, only 07 performed the economic valuation and the methods used were:  Dependency Ratio (DR), Replacement Costs (CR), Yield Analysis (YA) and Willingness to Pay (WTP). It was found, in general, that bee pollination is widely recognized for its importance for agricultural crops and for the formation of prices in agriculture. Nevertheless, the ESA proposes an integrative analysis of economic, environmental and social perspectives that guides the identification of values ​​beyond the market for ecosystem services. In the case of pollination, its contribution to the reproduction of native vegetation, maintenance of landscapes and, consequently, to the preservation of biodiversity must also be recognized.