Elsevier

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 93, March 2019, Pages 118-128
Environmental Science & Policy

Review
Insect pollinator conservation policy innovations at subnational levels: Lessons for lawmakers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.12.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We provide a content analysis of 110 subnational insect pollinator policies.

  • We characterize policy trends and document the spectrum of policy innovations.

  • Lawmakers are seeing pollinators as beneficial insects attending to pesticides anew.

  • With a few exceptions, policies are nascent and anemic steps for addressing a crisis.

  • This empirical account anticipates viable international policy and informs its design.

Abstract

Global insect pollinator declines are caused by human behaviors of land uses, habitat alteration, pesticides, and others. Policies—as mutually agreed-upon limits to behaviors to achieve shared values—are necessary for addressing complex social-ecological problems like declines of insect pollinator diversity and abundance. Despite scientific calls and public outcry to develop policy that addresses declines, multi-state agreements have not delivered such legislation nor met basic monitoring needs recommended by experts. In the absence of sweeping international agreements targeting pollinator declines, national and sub-national governments are actively deploying policies to address the pollinator health crisis. Although global monitoring and conservation agreements are needed, small-scale policy innovations represent advances in laws. These sub-national actions are effectively piloting new policy instruments in terms that have proven amenable to polarized political parties. To showcase the spectrum of policy innovations, we examine pollinator-relevant polices passed by US state-level legislatures from 2000 to 2017. This timeframe captures pre- and post-publicity of pollinator declines via colony collapse disorder, the evolving research on neonicotinoids, and highly-visible bee kills. We found 110 new laws covering apiculture, pesticides, awareness, habitat, and research. Together, they narrate an evolution of bureaucratic thinking on insects. Yet when compared to policies proposed by biologists, legislators failed to address four of ten policy targets. In politically divided nations, policies that have successfully appealed to and passed laws through sub-national assemblies are predictive of large-scale conservation bills that could win broad support for national laws and international agreements.

Introduction

Nearly 90% of the worlds’ flowering plants depend upon insect pollination for reproduction (Ollerton et al., 2011) and animals—including humans—eat those plants. Global populations of insect pollinators are experiencing declinesSS (Potts et al., 2016) due to several compounding stressors (Harrison and Winfree, 2015). A 2016 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) study estimates over 40% of the world’s invertebrate pollinators are at risk of extinction mostly bees and butterflies (IPBES, 2016). Losses threaten food security for humans and wildlife as well as global economic stability. Declines are due to loss of forage and nesting habitat and a suite of other environmental stressors including pesticides, pests, and pathogens (Potts et al., 2010; Goulson et al., 2015). This phenomenon received widespread attention with the discovery of an 84% population decline of Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) in the winter of 1996–1997 (Semmens et al., 2016) and the identification of colony collapse disorder (CCD) which killed 23% of honey bee (Apis melifera) colonies following the winter of 2006–2007 (vanEngelsdorp et al., 2009). The publicity of findings on lethal and non-lethal effects of a new (ca. 1990s) class of nicotine–based pesticides, neonicotinoids, on bees was catalyzed by highly visible bee kills such as the death of 25,000 native bumblebees in a retail store parking lot following the spraying ornamental trees in Hillsboro and Wilsonville, OR with dinotefuran in 2013 (Hunter, 2013). Reinforcing and amplifying public alarm are findings from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Status and Trends of European Pollinators (STEP) assessment (Nieto et al., 2014) and the listing of the Rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis) as an endangered species—the first bee to move from “threatened” to “endangered” status in the US (USFWS 2017). Concern for pollinators is surging.

Pollinators include several taxa (bats, birds, bees, flies, wasps, moths, beetles, butterflies, even mosquitoes) that inadvertently pollinate plants while foraging nectar, however bees are the only organisms that also collect pollen (Wilson & Carrill 2016). This makes bees the most effective animal pollinators, responsible for an estimated 90% of all global pollination (Buchmann and Nabhan, 1996). The world’s 20,000+ species of native bees and managed bees significantly contribute to agriculture and wildlife forage (Kremen et al., 2002; Hanes et al., 2015; Vanbergen and Initiative, 2013; Kleijn et al., 2015) justifying the level of attention to bees.

In response to declines and in light of our dependence upon insect pollinators, governments are marshaling policies to stem losses of managed and native insect pollinators. Here, policy represents society’s collective decisions to pursue certain objectives and goals reflecting what a government chooses to do or not to do to protect a natural resource or environmental quality (Kraft, 2018). Despite calls for specific pollinator policy targets (Dicks et al., 2016; IPBES, 2016) to address this “pollination crisis” (Kearns et al., 1998) as well as invertebrate conservation policy advice (Cardoso et al., 2011), we found no empirical studies of insect pollinator policies to review. Analysis of the policy innovations is needed in order to advise lawmakers or to evaluate the general design, adoption, and diffusion of relevant pollinator conservation policies.

To address this dearth, we first looked to US policy. from 2000 to 2017, a search of “pollinator” and “pollination” shows the United States Congress passed 4 of 31 bills addressing some aspect of pollinator health. (1) The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (H.R.6124) responds to CCD with appropriations “to investigate pollinator biology, immunology, ecology, genomics, and bioinformatics…on various factors… associated with colony collapse disorder, and other serious threats to the health of honey bees and other pollinators, including parasites and pathogens…sub lethal effects of insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides on honey bees and native and managed pollinators” (§7204(h)). Research should be aimed to “promote the health of honey bees and native pollinators through habitat conservation and best management practices” (§7204(h)). (2) The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorizes appropriations through FY18 for pollinator protection research (H.R.2642§7209). (3) The FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) Act of 2015 encourages “pollinator habitat and forage development and protection on transportation right-of ways” via “integrative vegetation management practices…[for] habitat and forage for Monarch butterflies, other native pollinators, and honey bees through plantings of native forbs and grasses, including noninvasive, native milkweed species that can serve as migratory way stations for butterflies and facilitate migrations of other pollinators” (H.R.22§1415). (4) Lastly, in 2013, H Amdt. 189 to H.R.1947, a Federal Agricultural Reform Act, called for improved federal coordination in addressing the decline of managed and native pollinators and to promote their long-term viability. Though few, these laws represent points of consensus in a divided nation. Laws indicate CCD led to serious concern for managed bees and more research, monitoring, and habitat are needed for managed and wild insect pollinators. Despite advances in policy, no sweeping national or international coordinating actions fitting a “crisis” have emerged.

In the absence of comprehensive national legislation, subnational assemblies are authoring insect pollinator laws worthy of attention as policy innovations. US State legislatures reflect the values, opinions, and desires of the populations they represent and require interactions among rural and urban representatives (Donovan et al., 2015). Consequently, policies that emerge from these interactions reflect consensus values, cooperation, and agreement that cross traditional party-line and demographic divides such as right-left, rural-urban, rich-poor, religious-secular, etc. These policies also resonate with economic, scientific, cultural, and legal sectors (Hall et al., 2017a, b). As subnational lawmakers pilot and incubate policy actions, an analysis of these policies reveals areas of agreement amenable to lateral and vertical integration—interstate, nation state, or international—policy transfer (Fischlein et al., 2010).

Below, we catalog and analyze the pollinator-relevant policies passed (new laws) by all US state legislatures from 2000 to 2017. This timeframe captures before, during, and after widely publicized pollinator declines of the mid-2000′s following the naming of CCD (˜2005), related phenomena affecting native bees (OR bee kills 2013), the formation of IPBES (2012) and its pollinator status report (2016), as well as pre- and post-policy innovations surrounding the Obama’s Pollinator Health Task Force (2014). First, we outline how we gathered and analyzed policies via content analysis. Then, we provide a thematic analysis of these new laws. We end with a discussion of how these subnational policy innovations fit calls from the science community. Following sustainability science’s call to make knowledge usable (Carmen et al., 2015; Mermet, 2018), this subnational policy census and analysis aims to document policy innovations and characterize policy trends for policy interveners. This empirical account enables the lawmaking community to anticipate and improve lateral and vertical transferability of insect pollinator conservation policy.

Section snippets

Methods

In 2017, we searched for policy passed by US state and territories’ legislative bodies between 2000–2017 using usa.gov and the following terms, stemmed words, and Boolean searches: “pollinator AND policy,” “state policy AND pollina*,” “pollination,” “neonicotinoids,” “pesticides,” “colony collapse disorder,” “beekeeping,” “honeybee,” and “honey bee.” After initial results, we expanded the search to combine each states’ name and each search term (e.g. “Illinois AND pollinator”). To ensure all

Findings

Thirty-six states legislatures passed 110 pollinator-relevant polices during our study period from 2000 to 2017 (Table 1 Fig. 1) and fourteen states did not pass any (Table 2). Policies (1) tightened apiculture standards to manage disease and pests, (2) created task forces to update pest management approaches (pesticide use), (3) established and improved pollinator habitat, (4) funded research and monitoring for managed bees and native insect pollinators, and (5) raised public awareness about

Discussion

The above 110 policies passed from 2000 to 2017 are the work state legislators. Although signed by state governors, the laws analyzed do not include activities of state executive offices or municipal policies. Consequently, they offer a partial picture of insect-pollinator conservation policy landscape in the US. By examining policies that passed and were signed into law, this analysis omits bills.

Although state legislators work in relative anonymity compared to Governors and US Congress, the

Conclusion

We outlined 110 subnational policies aimed to address the “pollinator health crisis” passed from 2000 to 2017. We identified trends within conservation policy activities of the 7383 elected US state lawmakers. With a few exceptions (CA, CT, MN, VT), these policies constitute nascent and anemic steps in addressing a pollinator health crisis. Cardoso et al.’s (2011) seven impediments to invertebrate policy describes a political dilemma where lawmakers know little of invertebrates and erroneously

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Missouri Department of Conservation cooperative agreements 336 and 359, Jefferson City, MO, USA and Center for Sustainability at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA.

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