ABSTRACT
What is the price of a bee? And more generally, where does the extinction of bee populations and the disruptive impact this would have on agriculture and global food supply ecosystems fit into discounted cash flow and other traditional risk decision-making tools used by investors? The simple answer is that bees don’t fit.1 This is not about some, or even many, investment analysts or firms being stupid or irresponsible. Rather, it is because the investment system has a risk management system which is fundamentally unfit for purpose when it comes to managing sector-wide and systemic risks.2 And given that much of the food supply chain requires pollination for plants to create plantbased products, bee decline and colony collapse disorder (CCD) have the potential
* This chapter is based on an earlier article co-authored by Raj Thamotheram and Aidan Ward for Investment & Pensions Europe entitled “Put the bee back in beta”, IPE, March 2013, accessed 31 March 2016, https://www.ipe.com/put-the-bee-back-in-beta/50256.fullarticle.
