UNEP report - Loss of plant pollinators could undermine efforts to feed the world’s growing population

A mixture of chemicals found in modern pesticides may be killing bee colonies around the world, according to a United Nations report. The report says that the highly toxic chemicals in the insecticides, collectively known as neonicotinoids, can cause loss of the sense of direction and memory on which bees rely to find food. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report says that when neonicotinoids are combined with certain fungicides, the toxicity becomes a thousand times stronger. It says that the loss of nature’s most important plant pollinators could undermine efforts to feed the world’s growing population. The report finds that tens of thousands of plant species could be lost in coming years unless conservation efforts are stepped up.

Source:
Ben Webster - TIMES - Environment Editor
Last updated March 9 2011 10:21PM

Link to UNEP report:
http://www.unep.org/dewa/Portals/67/pdf/Global_Bee_Colony_Disorder_and_…

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, while Chinese beekeepers have recently faced several inexplicable and complex symptoms of colony losses and a quarter of beekeepers in Japan have recently been confronted with sudden losses of their colonies. In Africa, Egyptian beekeepers along the Nile river have reported signs of colony collapse although there are no other confirmed reports from the rest of the continent so far.

The potentially disastrous decline in bees, a vital pollinating element in food production for the growing global population, is likely to continue unless humans profoundly change their ways, from the use of insecticides to air pollution, according to the United Nations report . "The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century," said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director. "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."

Sources: The Independent, 10 March 2011 (attached) & UN News Centre
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37731&Cr=&Cr1=