From Chemicals to Air
Pollution, New UNEP Report Points to Multiple
Factors Behind Pollinator Losses
Geneva/Nairobi, 10 March 2011 - More than
a dozen factors, ranging from declines in
flowering plants and the use of memory-damaging
insecticides to the world-wide spread of
pests and air pollution, may be behind the
emerging decline of bee colonies across
many parts of the globe.
Scientists are warning
that without profound changes to the way
human-beings manage the planet, declines
in pollinators needed to feed a growing
global population are likely to continue.
. New kinds of virulent
fungal pathogens-which can be deadly to
bees and other key pollinating insects-are
now being detected world-wide, migrating
from one region to another as a result of
shipments linked to globalization and rapidly
growing international trade
. Meanwhile an estimated
20,000 flowering plant species, upon which
many bee species depend for food, could
be lost over the coming decades unless conservation
efforts are stepped up
. Increasing use of
chemicals in agriculture, including 'systemic
insecticides' and those used to coat seeds,
is being found to be damaging or toxic to
bees. Some can, in combination, be even
more potent to pollinators, a phenomenon
known as the 'cocktail effect'
. Climate change, left
unaddressed, may aggravate the situation,
in various ways including by changing the
flowering times of plants and shifting rainfall
patterns. This may in turn affect the quality
and quantity of nectar supplies.
These are among the
findings of a new report published today
by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP),
which has brought together and analyzed
the latest science on collapsing bee colonies.
The study, entitled
Global Bee Colony Disorders and other Threats
to Insect Pollinators, underlines that multiple
factors are at work linked with the way
humans are rapidly changing the conditions
and the ground rules that support life on
Earth. It shows humans' large dependency
on ecosystem services even for such vital
sectors as food production.
It indicates that bees
are early warning indicators of wider impacts
on animal and plant life and that measures
to boost pollinators could not only improve
food security but the fate of many other
economically and environmentally-important
plants and animals.
The authors of the report
call for farmers and landowners to be offered
incentives to restore pollinator-friendly
habitats, including key flowering plants
including next to crop-producing fields.
More care needs to be
taken in the choice, timing and application
of insecticides and other chemicals. While
managed hives can be moved out of harm's
way, "wild populations (of pollinators)
are completely vulnerable", says the
report.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General
and UNEP Executive Director, said: "The
way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based
assets, including pollinators, will in part
define our collective future in the 21st
century. The fact is that of the 100 crop
species that provide 90 per cent of the
world's food, over 70 are pollinated by
bees".
"Human beings have
fabricated the illusion that in the 21st
century they have the technological prowess
to be independent of nature. Bees underline
the reality that we are more, not less dependent
on nature's services in a world of close
to seven billion people".
Bees and the Green Economy
Next year nations gather
again in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after
the Rio Earth Summit, to evolve international
efforts to achieve sustainable development
including through accelerating and scaling-up
a transition to a low carbon, resource-efficient
Green Economy.
Part of that transition
should include investing and re-investing
in the world's nature-based services generated
by forests and freshwaters to flower meadows
and coral reefs.
"Rio+20 is an opportunity
to move beyond narrow definitions of wealth
and to bring the often invisible, multi-trillion
dollar services of nature-including pollination
from insects such as bees- into national
and global accounts," said Mr Steiner.
"Some countries,
such as Brazil and India, have already embarked
on that transformation as part of a partnership
between UNEP and the World Bank. It is time
to widen and embed this work across the
global economy in order to tip the scales
in favour of management rather than mining
of the natural world and that includes the
services of pollinators," he added.
The new report on bee
colony disorders has been led by researchers
Dr Peter Neumann of the Swiss Bee Research
Centre and Dr Marie-Pierre Chauzat of the
French Agency for Environmental and Occupational
Health Safety. The team also included Dr
Jeffrey Pettis of the United States Department
of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.
Dr Neumann said: "The
transformation of the countryside and rural
areas in the past half century or so has
triggered a decline in wild-living bees
and other pollinators. Society is increasingly
investing in 'industrial-scale' hives and
managed colonies to make up the shortfall
and going so far as to truck bees around
to farms and fields in order to maintain
our food supplies".
"This report underlines
that a variety of factors are making these
man-made colonies increasingly vulnerable
to decline and collapse. We need to get
smarter about how we manage these hives,
but perhaps more importantly, we need to
better manage the landscape beyond, in order
to cost-effectively recover wild bee populations
to far healthier and more sustainable levels,"
he added.
Highlights from the
Report
Regional Losses
Declines in managed
bee colonies date back to the mid 1960s
in Europe but have accelerated since 1998,
especially in Belgium, France, Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United
Kingdom.
In North America, losses
of honey bee colonies since 2004 have left
the continent with fewer managed pollinators
than at any time in the past 50 years.
Chinese bee keepers,
who manage both western and eastern species
of honey bees, have recently "faced
several inexplicable and complex symptoms
of colony losses in both species".
A quarter of beekeepers
in Japan "have recently been confronted
with sudden losses of their bee colonies".
In Africa, beekeepers
along the Egyptian Nile have been reporting
signs of 'colony collapse disorder' although
to date there are no other confirmed reports
from the rest of the continent.
Multiple Factors
Habitat degradation,
including the loss of flowering plant species
that provide food for bees, is among the
key factors behind the decline of wild-living
pollinators.
. An Anglo-Dutch study
has found that since the 1980s, there has
been a 70 per cent drop in key wild flowers
among, for example, the mint, pea and perennial
herb families.
Parasites and Pests,
such as the well known Varroa mite which
feeds on bee fluids, are also a factor.
Other parasites include
the small hive beetle, which damages honeycombs,
stored honey and pollen. Endemic to sub-Saharan
Africa, it has spread to North America and
Australia and "is now anticipated to
arrive in Europe".
. Bees may also be suffering
from competition by 'alien species' such
as the Africanised bee in the United States
and the Asian hornet which feed on European
honey bees. The hornet has now colonized
nearly half of France since 2004.
Air pollution may be
interfering with the ability of bees to
find flowering plants and thus food.
. Scents that could
travel over 800 metres in the 1800s now
reach less than 200 metres from a plant
Electromagnetic fields
from sources such as power lines might also
be changing bee behaviour. Bees are sensitive
as they have small abdominal crystals that
contain lead.
Herbicides and pesticides
may be reducing the availability of wild
flowers and plants needed for food and for
the larval stages of some pollinators.
. Other impacts include
poisoning of pollinators and the weakening
of honey bees' immune systems
. Laboratory studies
have found that some insecticides and fungicides
can act together to be 1,000 times more
toxic to bees
Some insecticides, including
those applied to seeds and which can migrate
to the entire plant as it grows, and others
used to treat cats, fish, birds and rabbits,
may also be taking their toll.
. Studies have shown
that such chemicals can affect the sense
of direction, memory and brain metabolism
in bees
The management of hives
may also be adding to the problem.
Some of the treatments
against pests may actually be harmful to
bees and a growing habit of re-using equipment
and food from dead colonies might be spreading
disease and chemicals to new hives.
Transporting bees from
one farm to another in order to provide
pollination services increasingly unavailable
from nature could be an additional factor.
In the United States, trucks carrying up
to 20 million bees are common and each year
over two million colonies travel across
the continent.
. Mortality rates, following
transportation, can be as much as 10 per
cent of a colony