Pollinators such as bees and other insects are very important for maintaining a balance in natural systems. They are also essential for maintaining human food security as they offer ecosystem services like pollination, which helps humans grow their food.
“Insects and other terrestrial arthropods—such as bees, butterflies, beetles, and the like—are so essential to ecosystems that if they were to vanish entirely, humanity might not survive for more than a few months,” American biologist E O Wilson had written in his book The Diversity of Life.
Something to that effect is happening now.
Like many countries, India is in the middle of a ‘pollinator crisis’. Many pollinator populations are dying out, primarily due to the use of insecticides and pesticides in agriculture.
With pollinators vanishing, farmers are now taking recourse to either hand-pollinating their crops or renting honeybees to secure a decent harvest. In areas where agriculture is nearly impossible due to shortage of natural pollinators, people are manually carrying out nature’s most critical operation. But this artificial substitution of pollinators raises new concerns.
In a webinar on June 25, DTE (English) Chief Copy Editor Snigdha Das and DTE (Hindi) Principal Correspondent Raju Sajwan will be joined by farmers and beekeepers who will share their experiences, and scientists and experts, who will illustrate the extent of the crisis and ways to reverse it.
DTE’s cover stories on the subject in both English and Hindi can be freely downloaded from below.