Assessment details options for safeguarding pollinators

There are more than 20,000 species of wild bees alone that contribute to pollination.

FAO 26 February 2016, Kuala Lumpur -  - 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.

IPBES was founded four years ago with 124 member nations to form a crucial intersection between international scientific understanding and public policy making. 

See more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/384726/icode/