The Nagoya Protocol (2010) demonstrated that Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) are still achievable. Pollination services are essential for biodiversity, agriculture, ecosystem services and human well-being, but in jeopardy as The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) confirmed. In 2016, thirteen mostly European countries established the Coalition of the Willing on Pollinators. This group of forerunners increased to twenty-one members. Recently, the European Union (EU) decided to join in 2018. What would be necessary to move forward towards a Multilateral Environmental Agreement for pollinator protection during the next three or four Conferences of the Parties (COP) of the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD)? Current approaches for pollinator protection mostly require subsidies or donations, they are not scalable and might limit the number of countries promoting a multilateral agreement.This paper suggests a mix of four strategies and low-cost policy measures across sectors. They would be affordable even for Low Income Countries (LIC), but require addressing certain research gaps to set the stage for policymakers.

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield–related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), we partition the relative importance of species richness, abundance, and dominance for pollination; biological pest control; and final yields in the context of ongoing land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services in addition to and independent of abundance and dominance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.

Ecosystem services have received increasing attention in life sciences, but only a limited amount of quantitative data are available concerning the ability of weeds to provide these services. Following an expert focus group on this topic, a systematic search for articles displaying evidence of weeds providing regulating ecosystem services was performed, resulting in 129 articles. The most common service found was pest control and the prevailing mechanism was that weeds provide a suitable habitat for natural enemies. Other articles showed that weeds improved soil nutrient content, soil physical properties and crop pollinator abundance. Weeds were found to provide some important ecosystem services for agriculture, but only a small number of studies presented data on crop yield. Experimental approaches are proposed that can: (i) disentangle the benefits obtained from ecosystem services provisioning from the costs due to weed competition and (ii) quantify the contribution of diverse weed communities in reducing crop competition and in providing ecosystem services. Existing vegetation databases can be used to select weed species with functional traits facilitating ecosystem service provisioning while having a lower competitive capacity. However, for services such as pest control, there are hardly any specific plant traits that have been identified and more fundamental research is needed.

Rangeland management strategies impact biodiversity, the quality and quantity of ecosystem services, and overall rangeland resiliency. Previous management strategies, coupled with climate change, have led to widespread invasion by Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis; bluegrass) in the Northern Great Plains, United States. Bluegrass invasions are expected to have detrimental impacts on biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provided by rangelands. Yet none have investigated how bluegrass invasions influence pollinator populations, which are a prominent conservation concern and provide ecosystem services. We measured the impact of bluegrass invasion on mixed-grass prairie forb and butterfly communities. Obligate grassland butterflies, those that rely on grasslands, decreased as bluegrass cover increased, including the threatened Hesperia dacotae. Conversely, the abundance of facultative grassland butterflies, those found in grasslands but not fully dependent on them for their life history, increased as bluegrass increased. Moreover, plant species diversity and flowering forb species richness decreased as bluegrass cover increased. Overall, bluegrass invasion led to butterfly and plant community simplification, signaling a loss of biodiversity and potentially ecosystem services. Our research is the first to quantify how grassland butterflies and the floral resources they depend on are negatively impacted by bluegrass invasion. Resource managers should adopt management strategies that reduce bluegrass cover and improve nectar and host resources for obligate grassland butterflies. Management choices that removed disturbance regimes inherent to the Northern Great Plains (i.e., fire and grazing) led to bluegrass dominance in the region. Therefore, restoring disturbance regimes may be one way to reduce bluegrass and benefit pollinator populations.

The sustainability of agriculture can be improved by integrating management of ecosystem services, such as insect pollination, into farming practices. However, large‐scale adoption of ecosystem services‐based practices in agriculture is lacking, possibly because growers undervalue the benefits of ecosystem services compared to those of conventional management practices. Here we show that, under representative real‐world conditions, pollination and plant quality made similar contributions to marketable seed yield of hybrid leek (Allium porrum). Relative to the median, a 25% improvement of plant quality and pollination increased crop value by an estimated $18 007 and $17 174 ha−1 respectively. Across five crop lines, bumblebees delivered most pollination services, while other wild pollinator groups made less frequent but nevertheless substantial contributions. Honeybees actively managed for pollination services did not make significant contributions. Our results show that wild pollinators are an undervalued agricultural input and managing for enhancing pollinators makes sense economically in high‐revenue insect‐pollinated cropping systems.

The sustainability of agriculture can be improved by integrating management of ecosystem services, such as insect pollination, into farming practices. However, large‐scale adoption of ecosystem services‐based practices in agriculture is lacking, possibly because growers undervalue the benefits of ecosystem services compared to those of conventional management practices. Here we show that, under representative real‐world conditions, pollination and plant quality made similar contributions to marketable seed yield of hybrid leek (Allium porrum). Relative to the median, a 25% improvement of plant quality and pollination increased crop value by an estimated $18 007 and $17 174 ha⁻¹ respectively. Across five crop lines, bumblebees delivered most pollination services, while other wild pollinator groups made less frequent but nevertheless substantial contributions. Honeybees actively managed for pollination services did not make significant contributions. Our results show that wild pollinators are an undervalued agricultural input and managing for enhancing pollinators makes sense economically in high‐revenue insect‐pollinated cropping systems.

Climate change can alter species interactions essential for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function, such as pollination. Understanding the interactive effects of multiple abiotic conditions on floral traits and pollinator visitation are important to anticipate the implications of climate change on pollinator services. Floral visual and olfactory traits were measured from individuals of four forb species subjected to drought or normal water availability, and elevated or ambient concentrations of CO₂ in a factorial design. Pollinator visitation rates and community composition were observed in single‐species and multi‐species forb assemblages. Drought decreased floral visual traits and pollinator visitation rates but increased volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, whereas elevated CO₂ positively affected floral visual traits, VOC emissions and pollinator visitation rates. There was little evidence of interactive effects of drought and CO₂ on floral traits and pollinator visitation. Interestingly, the effects of climate treatments on pollinator visitation depended on whether plants were in single‐ or multi‐species assemblages. Components of climate change altered floral traits and pollinator visitation, but effects were modulated by plant community context. Investigating the response of floral traits, including VOCs, and context‐dependency of pollinator attraction provides additional insights and may aid in understanding the overall effects of climate change on plant–pollinator interactions.

Wild animals substantially support crop production by providing ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control. However, the strengths of synergies between ecosystem services and their dependencies on land-use management are largely unknown. Here, we took an experimental approach to test the impact of land-use intensification on both individual and combined pollination and pest control services in coffee production systems at Mount Kilimanjaro. We established a full-factorial pollinator and vertebrate exclosure experiment along a land-use gradient from traditional homegardens (agroforestry systems), shaded coffee plantations to sun coffee plantations (total sample size = 180 coffee bushes). The exclusion of vertebrates led to a reduction in fruit set of ca 9%. Pollinators did not affect fruit set, but significantly increased fruit weight of coffee by an average of 7.4%. We found no significant decline of these ecosystem services along the land-use gradient. Pest control and pollination service were thus complementary, contributing to coffee production by affecting the quantity and quality of a major tropical cash crop across different coffee production systems at Mount Kilimanjaro.

National audience | Pollinators provide a crucial ecosystem service by contributing to the reproduction of many wild plant species as well as crop plant species. Pollinators are facing pressures from multiple drivers leading to their declines with potentially serious implications for human food security and health, as well as ecosystem functions. Concern over pollinator declines has sparked a remarkable increase in studies assessing threats to pollinators and quantifying the impact of their decline on pollination services. Landscape changes have been identified as one of the major drivers of pollinator declines. Thus, understanding the effects of landscape composition and configuration on pollinators is crucial for the prevention of further pollinator loss and to help design strategies to protect pollinators in human‐dominated landscapes. Most previous studies examining the response of pollinator richness, abundance and composition to landscape composition showed a negative effect of the proportion of agricultural land. Landscape configuration can also play an important role: decreased patch size and reduced connectivity of landscape elements have been identified as important drivers of species richness declines. However, studies assessing the effects of landscape characteristics over time, even within a year, are less common. Furthermore, the majority of existing literature focuses on specific hymenopteran groups, but there is a lack of information on the effect of landscape on non‐bee taxa and plant-pollinator interactions. Here, we investigated the response of pollinator communities to landscape composition and configuration. To capture intra-annual variability of plant-pollinator interactions, we surveyed both pollinators (honeybees, wild bees, bumblebees, syrphids and butterflies) and flowering plants, every 15 days from May to September 2018. Surveys were carried out in 7 grasslands and 7 wet meadows located along the Sélune river, Manche (France). Fields were selected to represent a gradient in landscape heterogeneity.