Valuing Insect Pollination Services to Safeguard Crop Pollination in South Africa

A worldwide decline in pollinators, combined with the growing demand for pollinator-dependant crops, is increasingly placing the value chains of these crops at risk. Socio-economic impacts can be significant, especially for those economies dependant on export-oriented fruit industries. The valuation of pollinator services is often used for guiding management and investment decisions and aims to not only safeguard these services, but also to balance the supply of, and demand for, pollination services. Although South Africa has a rich pollinator biodiversity and a well-established managed honey bee industry, the supply of pollination is often outpaced by demand. Here for the first time, we attempt a calculation of the aggregate value of insect crop pollination services in South Africa. Using FAO data for 36 insect-dependent crops, we calculate the aggregate value of insect pollination in South Africa using the production function approach. Results show that in 2018, insect pollination was worth over USD 1500 million, equal to 42.2% of the annual production value of insect pollination-dependent crops in South Africa. We highlight the limitations of the valuation in guiding investment in pollination ecosystem services and managed pollination. We suggest that as a good practice, more detailed data related to crop pollination statistics should be collected to allow proper calculation of the ecosystem service contribution to national crop production.