SHADOW VALUE OF ECOSYSTEM RESILIENCE IN COMPLEX NATURAL LAND AS A WILD POLLINATOR HABITAT

This article investigates the shadow value of resilience in complex natural lands acting as wild pollinator habitats. We capture the linkage between pollination services in crop production and habitat conditions in the surrounding natural land with a bioeconomic model. Our case study is buckwheat, which is produced in the hilly and mountainous region of central Japan and is greatly dependent on diverse fauna for pollination services. We model the mechanism of regime shifts in ecosystems consisting of buckwheat fields and the surrounding natural land with a threshold estimation model. We then find that the forest around the crop fields, which serves as a habitat for wild pollinators, is a determinant of an ecological threshold that causes regime shifts. We calculate the shadow value of resilience provided by forest habitat around a unit of buckwheat field to be $ 9,796, implying that the total value of resilience in complex natural land amounts to half of the stock price of buckwheat land. This overlooked value gives us useful insights on the sustainable use of ecosystems, including both pollinator-mediated crop fields and habitats for pollinators.