Today (20 May 2022) is world bee day and in this blog, Dr Anne Touboulic, Associate Professor in Operations Management at Nottingham University Business School explores the role of this undervalued species.

Bumblebees are a symbol in many ways. A symbol of the interconnectedness of humanity and ecological systems and one of how such interdependence is fundamental not only to our functioning natural environment but also to our socio-economic systems. Beyond the role that these insects play in sustaining life on the planet, the reliance of the human species on bumblebees and their labour goes back thousands of years. From the foraging of wild honey to beekeeping, humans have enjoyed and used bee ‘products’ for many purposes, notably nutrition and health. Yet the role and contribution of bumblebees, remains largely hidden and undervalued. Recent research has shown that the global insect population, including pollinators like bumblebees, is under unprecedented threat due to land system changes (such as deforestation) and climate change.

Human society would not be able to sustain itself without bumblebees and pollinators in general. While this is widely acknowledged and has prompted action with regards to policies on agricultural practices in particular, including pesticide use, the rate at which pollinators are dying reveals that most of the so-called solutions proposed so far have not translated into meaningful and significant change.

One of the fundamental issues that restricts us from radically transforming the fate of bumblebees is the way in which we conceive of our relationship with them, other pollinators and the natural environmental more broadly. Indeed, the dominant view in our socio-economic system is rooted in instrumentalism. In other words, bumblebees are only valued as far as they are viewed as serving our consumerist model. From this perspective, bumblebees are simply an exploitable resource in our global production and consumption system, a small cog in extended supply chains driven by the demands of consumers in the global North and essentially by the growth-seeking multinational corporations.

Arguably, the coordination and control of supply chains by efficiency seeking corporations under the current capitalist system is the root-cause of environmental degradation experienced globally. Here one can think of the example of the commercialisation of honeybee colonies in North America, whose ‘work’ and ‘services’ are being rented out to industrial-scale farms to ensure the supply of sought-after crops like almonds. Such practices not only mean that honeybees face disastrous ‘working conditions’, which inevitably leads to their death, but are also detrimental to the wider ecosystems as commercial European honeybees end up competing with native bee species. The pursuit of ever-more efficiency and productivity obscures matters of ethics and care, which should be at the heart of we rethink the organisation our production and consumption systems to work in harmony with nature.

It is estimated that 75% of global crops depend on pollinators, which is the equivalent of one in three mouthfuls of the food we eat. Hence the (potential) impact of their collapse is immense. So, what is our fate and that of bumblebees? The novel ‘The History of Bees’ by Maja Lunde paints a rather bleak future, where all bees have disappeared, and pollination must be done by human hands. Although this may sound far-fetched to some, there is already evidence that parts of the global agricultural industry, such as vanilla, rely on hand or mechanical pollination. Many see the solution to be rooted in the advance of technology and so-called innovation, with the development of beehive monitoring technologies and of robotic bees to replace those that we have killed. We must be wary of the usual collective optimism around the possibilities offered by technology to ‘save us’ because such technofixes only serve to hide the root causes of the issue. The technologies mentioned above will all likely afford more control to and create more dependence over corporations in our global (food) supply chains. Furthermore, robot bees are imperfect replacements for bumblebees – they can perhaps fulfil their role as workers, but they cannot take their place in ecosystems where bumblebees are also a source of food for other species, and so on.

We need radically different ways of imagining our relationship with bumblebees, beyond seeing them as ecosystem service providers. We must detach ourselves from the dominant instrumental discourses to reconnect with different values, which can make us appreciate the natural world and other species, simply for their beauty and mystery. Only then will we be able to find harmony.

 

Post reference: https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/business/2022/05/20/bee-wildering-the-fate-of-bumblebees-in-our-global-production-and-consumption-systems-from-exploitation-to-extinction-to-roboticization/ 

The Perfect Storm: Environmentally and Socially Unsustainable Seafood Supply Chains

This post is written by Lee Matthews, Lucy McCarthy and Anne Touboulic.

Seafood supply chains sustain three billion people nutritionally and also provide 10% of the world’s population with employment, the vast majority of whom are small-scale fisher-people. Seafood provides access to safe protein for many of the world’s most economically marginalised people but these supply chains are not sustainable in their current form. 90% of global fish stocks are either fully fished or overfished and numerous species are becoming endangered, for example: bluefin tuna.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seafood supply chains are also blighted by many of the same problems explored in our previous blogs on terrestrial food production, such as inequality, waste and poor governance. They are also marred by illegal fishing, fraud and modern slavery, with international crime organisations being key players in the industry. It is estimated that there is a one in five chance that when we buy seafood it has been illegally caught. This robs local fishing communities of their livelihoods and their food. Fraud is a key strategy for moving this illegally caught seafood through the supply chain to the consumer. For example, Russian waters are drained by illegal fishing operations and the seafood is processed in China so its provenance is hidden. In the worst cases, illegal fishing is even mislabelled as being responsibly sourced.

As fish stocks become depleted, fishing vessels need to travel further from the coast in search of fish. This, combined with the high levels of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing within the industry create ideal conditions for modern slavery. Forced labour and human trafficking are well-documented in the tuna fisheries of the Pacific but despite this, only 4 of the 35 leading tuna brands conduct due diligence on modern slavery within their supply chains. Violence against fisher people working in the Pacific is similarly well documented, with human rights abuses including beatings and murder, with dead bodies being thrown into the ocean.

While it is tempting to believe that technofixes, like blockchain, will save the ocean and the people who depend upon it, more fundamental change is required. But as so often with our food supply chains, the answers are as elusive as they are obvious. We need to return to local, community-based supply chains if the ocean is to continue to sustain a growing world population. COVID-19’s impact on business as usual in this sector has provided a fertile ground for some community seafood systems to emerge in places like North America. Unfortunately however, the governance required to end IUU fishing, overfishing and destructive fishing practices, such as the use of Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs), would require a level of international cooperation that appears beyond our world’s current leaders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we continue along our current path, more people globally will need alternatives to wild fish, such as farmed fish (aquaculture) and other potentially unsafe alternatives. Farmed fish is the fastest growing area of food production in the world and while it is presented as a sustainable alternative to wild fish, it is far from the panacea it may seem. Farmed fish are dependent on feed made from the very wild fish they are meant to replace and the poor conditions in which they are kept leave them vulnerable to disease and parasites, such as the sea lice infecting farmed salmon. Farmed seafood can have high levels of antibiotics, which may lead to antibiotic resistance, one of the greatest threats to human health today.

For the poorest people of the world that cannot afford farmed seafood, a glimpse of a possible future can be seen in West Africa. Subsidised large fishing vessels from the European Union have moved to the waters off West Africa and have depleted the fish stocks there. Seafood is the largest source of protein in West Africa and as fish stocks become depleted increased consumption of bushmeat is necessary. Eating certain wildlife is not only a driver of biodiversity loss but can be also be a source of zoonotic diseases, such as Ebola and coronavirus. More of us are starting to become aware that our own health depends on the health of the planet and that food supply chains can no longer be considered independently of planetary health.

 

Original Post: https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/futurefood/2020/05/19/the-perfect-storm-environmentally-and-socially-unsustainable-seafood-supply-chains/