Though certainly not to everyone’s taste, the arrival of the pungent durian — the king of fruits — is an annual highlight on the calendar of many Malaysians, mine included. The durian depends on bats for pollination. A dwindling bat population may translate into less abundance of durian fruits in our local markets.
More universally known and enjoyed perhaps are crops, such as oil palm, coffee and cocoa, mangos and kiwifruit, apples, cherries and pears, watermelons and cantaloupes, squash, zucchinis and avocados, cashews and almonds. All these highly beneficial and flavourful food crops have a common denominator: they arrive in our stores thanks to the tireless efforts of “pollinators” — some 20,000 species of bees, butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, birds, bats and others. Nature exploits their flying and crawling abilities to transport pollen from place to place within ecosystems and fertilise many types of flora.
Over the years, unfortunately, scientists have grown increasingly concerned about troubles building for populations of these small but enormously helpful species, caused by a range of pressures, almost all, related to human activity. These include changes in land use, industrialised farming and an intensifying use of pesticides, pollution, pathogens and climate change.
This coming week, Malaysia has the honour of hosting hundreds of world-leading scientific experts, influential national and international policymakers and other biodiversity-related stakeholders. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will officiate the opening session today. Headlining the agenda: options to address potentially catastrophic problems affecting pollinator species.
The gathering in Kuala Lumpur represents just the fourth time member countries (now 124 in all) of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) will have met for plenary discussions. It could be said that Kuala Lumpur is the birthplace of IPBES. As early as 2008, Kuala Lumpur hosted the first of a series of United Nations Environment Programme-brokered international meetings to help decide whether, why and how to establish and institutionalise an intergovernmental body to meet science-policy needs related to biodiversity and ecosystem services.
From those early meetings, we progressed to plenaries, where we elected a bureau and selected a multidisciplinary expert panel. We went on to further operationalise IPBES by agreeing on a work programme, a conceptual framework and an initial budget.
IPBES was instituted in 2012 as a biodiversity-focused counterpart to the Intergovernmental Platform on Climate Change (IPCC), both of which create crucial intersections of international science understanding and public policymaking. The report on pollinator species, two years in preparation by a team of 77 global experts, is the first-ever assessment presented to the IPBES parties and has major implications for the global food supply, agriculture industry and world economy. And, the stakes are very high.
Malaysians owe a particular debt to a small weevil (a type of beetle), originally from Cameroon, which very effectively pollinates oil palm, that form a large cornerstone of our national economy.
Introduced as a pollinator in 1981, the weevil took over a laborious task that plantation workers had been doing by hand, enabling more effective uses of our human capital, a dramatic increase in palm oil production, and a quick reduction of the industry’s annual costs by more than US$100 million (RM420 million), a figure that has more than tripled since.
The assessment examines a range of questions related to pollinators including:
WHAT role do pollinators play in food production?
HOW economically valuable are pollination services?
ARE wild or managed pollinators in decline regionally or globally and if so, what are the implications for food, health and nutritional security?
WHAT would be the economic and social implications of a decline in pollinators?
IF pollinators are in decline what are the causes? and,
WHAT are the options to protect pollinators and restore pollination services?
When it is launched on Friday, the IPBES Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production will underline the critical importance of understanding threats facing pollinators and provide options for policymakers to consider to ensure their survival. And, there are many existing means to reverse the trend and stabilise these populations.
Other objectives at the meeting include the election of my successor as IPBES chair and the possible announcement of a new IPBES global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services (for release in 2019).
Last December in Paris, the world community took stock of the scientific evidence of a changing climate, of the cost of action versus inaction, and of our duty to coming generations. They then agreed on bold measures to address the climate threat in a concerted way.
In many ways, the week ahead is a comparably critical one for securing our common future, and a major debut of IPBES’ in its role as the bridge between authoritative biodiversity science and policymaking.
We welcome the world’s IPBES delegates and extend our best wishes for the success of their deliberations.
Tan Sri Zakri Abdul Hamid is science adviser to the prime minister and founding chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services