Monetary biodiversity indicators for pollinator services in Germany
On behalf of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), corsus is preparing the study ‘Monetary biodiversity indicators for pollinator services in Germany’.
Biodiversity, the diversity of life at the species, ecosystem and genetic levels, is the result of complex evolutionary processes. It enables a multitude of ecological services that form the basis of anthropogenic well-being.
However, a dramatic decline in biodiversity has been observed in recent decades. According to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), one million species are threatened with extinction, many of them within the next few decades. The extinction rate, i.e. the proportion of species that disappear from the Earth each year, is currently ten to several hundred times higher than the average over the last ten million years. In addition, the rate of species extinction is significantly higher than the average rate over the last ten million years (IPBES, 2019). While previous losses of biodiversity were mainly due to natural processes, current research indicates that present declines are predominantly anthropogenic in origin. The decline is mainly caused by the ongoing alteration and destruction of natural habitats, the overexploitation of resources, climate change, environmental pollution and invasive species (Jaureguiberry et al., 2022) .
The relevance of biodiversity conservation for humans is often justified by considering the functional importance of ecosystems, known as ecosystem services. These ecosystem services form the basis for human development and sustainable prosperity worldwide. The monetary value of ecosystem services is estimated at over €170 billion for the European Union (European Commission. Statistical Office of the European Union., 2020).
One of these ecosystem services is pollination. Pollination is mostly carried out by wind (anemophily) or animals (zoophily). Most animal pollination is carried out by insects, especially bees (wild bees, honey bees, bumblebees). Pollination is particularly important for wild plants and cultivated plants:
80 per cent of wild plants depend at least partially on animal pollination for their reproduction (Ollerton et al., 2011),
while more than 70 per cent of cultivated plants depend at least partially on pollinators, which account for a total of 35 per cent of production volume. Five to eight per cent of these are critically dependent on insect pollination (Klein et al., 2007; Baylis et al., 2021).
In Germany, the economic value of pollination-dependent crops is approximately £3.9 billion. The value of insect-dependent crops is €1.6 billion (Oré Barrios et al., 2017).
Markets function on the assumption that every producer must pay or can obtain a price for the inputs they use (Bofinger, 2015). In the case of ecosystem services, however, the use of these services does not usually involve any costs. Even actions that lead to a reduction in these services do not usually have to be paid for, despite the resulting social costs. However, in order to improve the overall economic management of ecosystem services, and thus also pollinator services, it is essential to record the economic value of ecosystem services.
The aim of the study is therefore to identify (publicly available) monetary indicators for pollinator services in Germany, to analyse them critically and to assess their international compatibility, particularly within the European Union (EU).
Contact persons: Dr Ulrike Eberle & Felix Lücking
Duration: October 2025 to April 2026
Client: Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN)
Baylis, K., Lichtenberg, E. M., & Lichtenberg, E. (2021). Economics of Pollination. Annual Review of Resource Economics, 13(Volume 13, 2021), 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-101420-110406
Bofinger, P. (2015). Grundzüge der Volkswirtschaftslehre. Pearson Deutschland
European Commission. Statistical Office of the European Union. (2020). Accounting for ecosystems and their services in the European Union (INCA): Final report from phase II of the INCA project aiming to develop a pilot for an integrated system of ecosystem accounts for the EU : 2021 edition. Publications Office. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2785/197909
IPBES. (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5657041
Jaureguiberry, P., Titeux, N., Wiemers, M., Bowler, D. E., Coscieme, L., Golden, A. S., Guerra, C. A., Jacob, U., Takahashi, Y., Settele, J., Díaz, S., Molnár, Z., & Purvis, A. (2022). The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss. Science Advances, 8(45), eabm9982. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm9982
Klein, A.-M., Vaissière, B. E., Cane, J. H., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Cunningham, S. A., Kremen, C., & Tscharntke, T. (2007). Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274(1608), 303–313. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.3721
Ollerton, J., Winfree, R., & Tarrant, S. (2011). How many flowering plants are pollinated by animals? Oikos, 120(3), 321–326. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2010.18644.x
Oré Barrios, C., Mäurer, E., Lippert, C., & Dabbert, S. (2017). Eine Ökonomische Analyse des Imkerei-Sektors in Deutschland: An Economic Analysis of the Beekeeping Sector in Germany. [Schlussbericht]. https://orgprints.org/id/eprint/32437/1/32437_15NA073_dabbert_uni_hohenheim_analyse_Imkerei.pdf
