Anthropocene Crisis: Climate Change, Pollinators, and Food Security
1
Geography and Environmental Studies, Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON N2L 6C2, Canada
2
School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Environments 2019, 6(2), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6020022
Received: 28 November 2018
/
Revised: 12 February 2019
/
Accepted: 18 February 2019
/
Published: 21 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Impacts of Climate Change on Global Food System)
In this paper, we propose a new approach—understood as a whole-of-community approach—to address a dualistic and dysfunctional human/nature relationship. Of particular concern is the decline in health and numbers of the insects that pollinate an estimated 90 percent of the Earth’s flora and an estimated 35 percent of global crop volume. Specifically, bees provide the majority of biotic pollination and play a critical role in food crop pollination. Multiple factors are contributing to this growing problem including a changing climate. In 2016, the International Commission on Stratigraphy agreed that the concept of the Anthropocene—the human epoch—is of sufficient scale to be considered part of the geological time scale. This indicates that these crises are not random or passive—they are largely the direct result of human activities. Despite decades of awareness of these socio-ecological issues, they continue to worsen. In addition, the growing awareness of the critical role of pollinators is creating a new understanding of our interconnectedness with the “natural” world. We introduce the Bee City movement as a way to operationalize a whole-of-community approach. Individual action is critical, but addressing pollinator health in these forums legitimizes and provides an institutional space for otherwise fringe, or even marginalized, activities and more coherent spaces for habitat creation.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
pollinators; Anthropocene; climate change; food security; community
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Marshman, J.; Blay-Palmer, A.; Landman, K. Anthropocene Crisis: Climate Change, Pollinators, and Food Security. Environments 2019, 6, 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6020022
AMA Style
Marshman J, Blay-Palmer A, Landman K. Anthropocene Crisis: Climate Change, Pollinators, and Food Security. Environments. 2019; 6(2):22. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6020022
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarshman, Jennifer, Alison Blay-Palmer, and Karen Landman. 2019. "Anthropocene Crisis: Climate Change, Pollinators, and Food Security" Environments 6, no. 2: 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments6020022
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
