Revisiting the economic valuation of agricultural losses due to large-scale changes in pollinator populations

Christian Lippert, Arndt Feuerbacher () and Manuel Narjes

Ecological Economics, 2021, vol. 180, issue C

Abstract: We discuss comparative static partial equilibrium approaches for large-scale monetary valuations of animal-mediated crop pollination. These approaches rely upon reported crop production values, own-price elasticities of demand and experimentally found dependence ratios that express crop-specific yield shares due to pollinators. We dismiss the established long-term approach given the difficulty of anticipating the adaptation of the bioeconomic system to changes of pollinator abundance. Instead, we suggest another more parsimonious method, which assesses the short-term welfare effects following a sudden change in pollinator abundance. Using 2016-2018 data on agricultural production, we estimate the worldwide welfare effects due to a pollinator collapse for a range of plausible own-price elasticities, both from short-term and long-term perspectives. For the former we also simulate a global recovery scenario. Depending on the overall price elasticity assumed, the short-term effects of a total pollinator loss lie between 1 and 2 % of global GDP. We also apply the different valuation approaches to more detailed German 2006-2016 crop production data, where we account for crop-specific demand. As the reported dependence ratios vary in wide ranges, we rely upon stochastic simulations to obtain likely distributions of the German welfare effects.

Keywords: agriculture; pollination service; valuation; dependence ratios; demand elasticities; partial equilibrium analysis; consumer surplus; pollinator collapse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:180:y:2021:i:c:s0921800920300793

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106860

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