Quoted material

> There has been tremendous recent enthusiasm among conservation advocates for "ecosystem services". The idea is to show that natural areas can be shown to provide valuable goods and services, and should, therefore, be preserved. While there has been great interest in ecosystem services, the evidence for their value has thus far been limited. In this paper I consider one service that has attracted considerable interest from researchers and advocates: pollination. Do the services afforded by such pollinators provide strong incentives for the conservation of their habitats? 

> If pollinators are plentiful this factor will be small, and so the marginal pollinator would not be of much value. Let us suppose, though, that pollinators are scarce, and hence valuable. But if they are valuable it is because many plants are likely to go unfertilized, and thus that crop losses for want of pollination are high. This, in turn, means that the price at which crops can be sold must substantially exceed the costs of planting them. 

> In this paper I develop a simple but, I would argue, revealing model of the value of pollination services that demonstrates the above results. This demonstration that the value of one ecosystem service may not provide strong conservation incentives does not necessarily cast any light on the value of any others, but does show that it is important to think carefully and critically about the economic case for conservation. 

> Conservation advocates have shown great enthusiasm for the idea of ecosystem services. If the value of  the goods and services provided by areas of natural habitat could be shown to exceed the opportunity  costs of forgoing other uses of such habitats, a compelling argument might be made for their conservation. 

> To date, however, evidence for the value of ecosystem services is sparse and inconclusive. In this paper I have argued that simple economics and casual empiricism suggest that one ecosystem service often discussed and studied – pollination services provided when areas of habitat are preserved shelter native pollinators – is not of appreciable economic value. In fact, it may well be that such pollination services are so abundant as to command little value on the margin in many areas of the world. 

Simpson, R. D. (2013). THE ECONOMICS OF AN ECOSYSTEM SERVICE: THE CASE OF NATURAL POLLINATION.

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