Impacts on Insect and Mite Pests - Climate Resilient Agriculture for Ensuring Food Security - page 134

as they are excellent pollinators for many of the
economically important crops (Sidhu and Mehta
2008 ). The majority of the fl owering plants require
insect pollinators like fl ies, butterfl ies, moths, bee-
tles, and especially bees for their reproduction and
formation of fruits and seeds (Ricketts et al. 2008 ).
Honey bees are perhaps the best known pollinators
because of their fl oral fi delity. Insect pollination,
mostly by bees, is necessary for 75 % of all crops
that are used directly for human food worldwide.
Thus, the entomophilies pollination is a fundamen-
tal process essential for the production of about one-
third of the world human food (Klein et al. 2007 ).
According to Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Report 2005, pollination is one of the
15 major ecosystem services currently under
threat from mounting pressures exerted by grow-
ing population, depleting natural resource base
and global climate change (Sachs 2008 ). Earlier
studies have clearly shown that the population
abundance, geographic range, and pollination
activities of important pollinator species like bees,
moths, and butterfl ies are declining considerably
with changing climate (FAO 2008 ). The climatic
factors like temperature and water availability
have been found to affect profoundly the critical
events like fl owering, pollination, and fruiting in
the life cycle of plants (Cleland et al. 2007 ). Many
pollinators have synchronized their life cycles
with plant phenological events. Impending cli-
mate change is expected to disrupt the synchrony
between plant-pollinator relationships by chang-
ing the phenological events in their life cycles and
may thus affect the extent of pollination (Ricketts
et al. 2008 ). The quality and the quantity of polli-
nation have multiple implications for food secu-
rity, species diversity, ecosystem stability, and
resilience to climate change (FAO 2008 ).
Although pollination is a critical issue, it
appears to be neglected and overlooked for other
ecosystem services such as water and air quality,
climate regulation, and food availability. The pol-
lination services and associated risks are not
addressed properly in determining the actions
needed for conserving pollinators. The high
degree of uncertainty regarding the risks related
to pollination services implies the need for well-
focused research to understand scientifi cally the
pollination processes.

7.15 Food Security

The greatest challenge for humanity in the com-
ing century is to double the present levels of food
production to meet the needs of an ever-increasing
population by sustainable use of shrinking natu-
ral resource base (Deka et al. 2008 ). The aggra-
vating pest problems under changing climate
regimes are expected to intensify yield losses,
threatening the food security of the countries
with high dependency on agriculture (Chahal
et al. 2008 ). Climate change is likely to affect the
extent of entomophilous pollination by disrupt-
ing the synchrony between plant-pollinator life
cycles (Kudo et al. 2004 ), with an estimated risk
of reduction in world food production by one-
third (Klein et al. 2007 ). This has major implica-
tion for food and nutritional security (FAO 2008 ).
This may have direct bearing on the livelihood of
the rural poor as their survival is directly linked
to outcomes from food production systems. The
increased food prices resulting from declining
food production may also impact negatively the
urban population (Chahal et al. 2008 ).
Some of the strategies that are useful in tack-
ling the issue are pointed out below:
• Sensitization of stakeholders about climate
change and its impacts
• Farmers' participatory research for enhancing
adaptive capacity

• Promotion of resource conservation

technologies
- Breeding climate-resilient varieties

- Rescheduling of crop calendars

- GIS-based risk mapping of crop pests

- Screening of pesticides with novel mode of

actions

7.16 Reduced Effectiveness

of Pest Management
Strategies

Certain effective cultural pest management prac-
tices like crop rotation, early/late planting, etc.
will be less or not effective with changed climate
because of shrinking of crop growing seasons,
colonization of crops by early insect arrival, and/