Tag: urban

Urban gardens are crucial food sources for pollinators – here’s what to plant for every season

Posted on by janet.crompton
A bumblebee visits a blooming honeysuckle plant.
Sidorova Mariya | Shutterstock

Pollinators are struggling to survive in the countryside, where flower-rich meadows, hedges and fields have been replaced by green monocultures, the result of modern industrialised farming. Yet an unlikely refuge could come in the form of city gardens.

Research has shown how the havens that urban gardeners create provide plentiful nectar, the energy-rich sugar solution that pollinators harvest from flowers to keep themselves flying.

In a city, flying insects like bees, butterflies and hoverflies, can flit from one garden to the next and by doing so ensure they find food whenever they need it.
These urban gardens produce some 85% of the nectar found in a city. Countryside nectar supplies, by contrast, have declined by one-third in Britain since the 1930s.

Our new research has found that this urban food supply for pollinators is also more diverse and continuous throughout the year than in farmland. Everyone with a garden, allotment or even a window box can create their own haven for pollinators. Here are tips on what to plant for each season.

Three people in wellington boots work on raised beds in a garden.
Community gardens, allotments, even window boxes can sustain pollinators throughout the year.
KOTOIMAGES | Shutterstock

What to plant in spring

The first queen bumblebees emerge from winter hibernation in February and March. They need food straight away.

At this time of year nectar-rich plants are vital energy sources for warming up cold flight muscles, with pollen providing the necessary protein for egg laying and larval growth. In early spring much of the countryside is still bleak and inhospitable.

Gardeners can help by planting borders of hellebore, Pulmonaria and grape hyacinth. Trees and shrubs such as willow, cherry and flowering currant are also fantastic for packing a lot of food into a small space.

A bee on a willow flower
Willow in bloom.
Ira Kalinicheva | Shutterstock

What to plant in summer

In late spring and early summer, pollinators have more food available – but there is also more competition for it. So it is crucial to ensure you have a diverse array of different flowering plants. This will guarantee there is attractive and accessible food to suit a wide range of insects and provide them with nutritionally balanced diets.

A great assortment of plants, including honeysuckle, Campanula and lavender, can provide floral resources in summer. Mowing the lawn a little less often will help too, giving the chance for important so-called weeds, such as clover and dandelion, to bloom.

Ivy in bloom with a red admiral.
Ivy in bloom with a red admiral.
Seepix | Shutterstock

What to plant in autumn

By late summer and autumn there are fewer species still flowering in gardens. A handful dominate the nectar supplies, particularly Fuchsia, Salvia and Crocosmia.

For many pollinators, however, these flowers are entirely useless. Their nectar is hidden away down a tube, only accessible to insects with long tongues, such as the garden bumblebee.

This means solitary bees and hoverflies may need to find other sources of food. The gardener can help by prioritising open and accessible flowers. Opt for species such as ivy, Sedum, Echinacea and oregano.

What to plant in winter

Few pollinators are still active in winter. Most species die off leaving the next generation behind as eggs, larvae or pupae.

But bumblebees and honeybees remain in flight, taking advantage of the warmer climate and winter flowers that cities can provide. By vibrating their wings, bumblebees can warm up to forage in temperatures barely exceeding freezing point, but they need a lot of energy-rich nectar to do so. If you want to attract bees into your garden during the winter some of the best options are Mahonia, sweet box, winter honeysuckle and the strawberry tree.

Yellow Mahonia on a frosty morning.
Mahonia on a frosty morning.
Sally Wallis | Shutterstock

Urban gardens are small and numerous, with hundreds or even thousands packed into a single square kilometre of a residential neighbourhood. Each gardener is different, with individual preferences of what to plant, how regularly to mow the lawn and even how to decide what constitutes a weed.

This results in an enormous variation from garden to garden in the quantity of nectar, the timing of its production and the types of flowers producing it. But there is always room for improvement. Some gardens provide pollinators with hundreds of times less nectar than others.

So keep yours well stocked with nectar and free from toxic pesticides. You’ll be amazed by the impact you can have.

This blog is written by Caboteers Nicholas Tew, PhD Candidate in Community Ecology, University of Bristol; Jane Memmott, Professor of Ecology, University of Bristol, and Katherine Baldock, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Northumbria University, Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#CabotNext10 Spotlight on City Futures

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Dr Katharina Burger

In conversation with Dr Katharina Burger, theme lead at the Cabot Institute for the Environment

Why did you choose to become a theme leader at Cabot Institute?

I applied to become a Theme Leader at Cabot, a voluntary role, to bring together scientists from different faculties to help us jointly develop proposals to address some of the major challenges facing our urban environments. My educational background is in Civil Engineering at Bristol and I am now in the School of Management, I felt that this combination would allow me to build links and communicate across different ways of thinking about socio-technical challenges and systems.

In your opinion, what is one of the biggest global challenges associated with your theme? (Feel free to name others if there is more than one)

The biggest challenge is to evolve environmentally sustainable, resilient, socially inclusive, safe and violence-free and economically productive cities. The following areas are part of this challenge:

  1. Divided Cities/Inclusive Growth: addressing intra-urban spatial inequalities and economic segregation in cities, including across income groups and new arrivals to the city, the role of housing affordability and public transport accessibility in widening intra-city inequalities
  2. Providing urban services through effective governance, innovation and resilient infrastructures: the role of public policies in bridging urban divides and the relevance of the scale of analysis, developing insights to build effective cross-sector partnerships, including co-design and delivery of impactful projects, engaging communities and supporting inclusion
  3. Infrastructure resilience: smart and sustainable city infrastructure, adaptive to climate change, enabling low carbon transitions; sustainable financing and new multi-sectoral business models.

As we are looking into the future, what longer term projects are there in your theme?

At the University of Bristol, and within the GW4 Alliance, there are several groups seeking to make a positive impact on our urban futures. For example, there is an Urban Research Group in the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law, a GW4 Urban Humanities cluster, and some very large projects on smart and sustainable cities in engineering. Cabot has always managed to convene people with different interests, and the work of the Cabot City Futures theme is really composed of the multiplicity of individual projects that take place across the university. It is this variety of interests, particularly when discussed with a view to their role in climate-friendly and inclusive future cities, that captures what the theme is about.

Examples of research related to cities can be found by using UoB’s search engine with a keyword search. Staff self-identify as being affiliated with Cabot, and this is also visible through this search engine.

Across the portfolio of projects in your theme, what type of institutions are you working with? (For example, governments, NGO’s)

Theme members work with a wide range of institutions, as well as non-governmental organisations, businesses and community organisations within Bristol, and internationally.

Examples of research related to cities, and information about participating organisations, can be found by using UoB’s search engine with a keyword search.

What disciplines are currently represented within your theme?

On the City Futures Theme mailing list, the following disciplines are represented:

Accounting and Finance, Aerospace Engineering, Anthropology and Archaeology, Biological Sciences, Centre for English Language and Foundation Studies, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Economics, Economics, Finance and Management, Education, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Engineering Mathematics, English, French, Geographical Sciences, History, Italian, Law School, Management, Mechanical Engineering, Medical School, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Policy Studies, Psychological Science, Sociology, Politics and International Studies, and Veterinary School.

In your opinion, why is it important to highlight interdisciplinary research both in general and here at Bristol?

Interdisciplinary research is key to addressing challenges that cut across social, cultural and technical boundaries, and challenges within cities tend to be characterised by this complexity. As such, systems approaches are needed to engage citizens, businesses, local government, and academia in shaping City futures. This means that we need to bring together disciplines that are:

  1. human-centred and focus on individual and collective learning processes
  2. traditional engineering disciplines that support many of the technical systems and increasingly digital infrastructures that underpin many of the services that citizens rely on for quality of life
  3. more foundational disciplines, such as, biology and chemistry that develop innovative approaches to nature-based solutions for cities to make them more climate-resilient.
  4. community medicines which help to develop a more holistic approach to notions of resilience in cities.

And of course, there are questions around the role of a city in international city networks so that learning is enabled, and this may require insights from political scientists, while there are also questions about urban histories and urban futures where humanities scholars and anthropologists may be particularly well-versed in helping us develop a better understanding of challenges. And there are most certainly many more disciplines where specialist perspectives, frameworks, and methodologies can contribute to help us genuinely develop novel approaches to city futures.

Are there any projects which are currently underway in your theme which are interdisciplinary that you believe should be highlighted in this campaign?

The theme has supported various interdisciplinary activities over the years. Please consult the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

A project that I am currently working on is a knowledge exchange project with West of England Combined Authority (WECA), where we’re developing Open Access toolkit to aid with sustainable business recovery in the City of Bristol and the wider region. The project cuts across questions of socio-economic mobility and HR diversity, sustainable business practices, and technological innovation, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary thinking in order to address challenges that pertain to inclusive urban prosperity, quality of life and sustainability .

For more information about this Cabot Institute for the Environment research theme, visit our website.

Tackling urban landslides in an uncertain future

Posted on by janet.crompton

One of the challenges of the 21st century is how to reconcile global urban growth with the prevention and mitigation of environmental disasters, such as those caused by landslides. Every year 300 million people are exposed to landslides worldwide, with over 4,000 fatalities, 250,000 of people affected, and billions of US dollars of economic damage. However, impacts might be worse in the future for two main reasons. First, severe precipitations might become more frequent under climate change, causing more rainfall-triggered landslides. Second, growing urban population will lead more people to live in areas exposed to landslides globally, and in particular in developing countries where low-income dwellers are starting to overcrowd landslide-prone areas such as steep slopes. With more hurricanes to come and more people at risk, understanding where and when landslides might occur is becoming increasingly crucial.

Current predictions are too uncertain to support decisions

One method to predict landslides in the future is to look at landslides in the past. The analysis of historical records allows the identification of those hillslopes that have failed in the past. Currently stable hillslopes where similar conditions exist (for example, similar slope gradients) are ‘tagged’ with high landslide probability. These areas might be then excluded for construction development or might be the first to be alerted when a severe precipitation is expected.

This approach to landslide prediction is, however, often insufficient. Landslides and rainfall records as well as data on hillslope properties are often affected by large errors or unavailable in sufficient detail. In addition, what happened in the past might not be representative of what may happen in the future, making historical records less useful for long-term projections. Climate and socio-economic models can be used to build scenarios of how rainfall patters and cities might look like in the future. Unfortunately, these scenarios can vary significantly because they depend on highly uncertain factors such as future carbon emissions. As a result, landslide estimates can also be very different and sometimes even contradictory – some predicting an increase and others a decrease in landslides occurrence – undermining their practical use for risk management.

From ‘predict then act’ to ‘act now with low regrets’

Instead of trying to predict how climate and urban expansion will evolve in the future, I used a different approach centred on decision making. I ask the question: how much climate and/or urban expansion needs to change before landslide hazard significantly increases?

The scientific method behind my analysis (Bozzolan et al. 2020, NHESS) first generates thousands of synthetic but realistic hillslopes representations of the study area. Then, it imposes hypothetical scenarios of increasing rainfall severities and urban expansion, also considering different construction features that could affect slope stability (for example, the presence or not of adequate slope drainage such as roof gutters on houses).

Finally, it uses a computer model to assess the stability of these virtual hillslopes, generating a new synthetic library of landslide records. By exploring the library is now possible to identify those combinations of rainfall and urban development conditions (e.g., with or without roof gutters) for which hillslopes are most likely to fail. ‘Low-regret’ mitigation actions will be those that perform well across scenarios and therefore should be prioritised even if future rainfall and urban predictions remain unknown.

A practical tool for decision makers

This new method which explores many ‘what if’ scenarios is a useful tool for decision makers in landslide risk management and reduction. For example, figure 1 shows how a map of landslide probability in Saint Lucia (Eastern Caribbean) might look like if the severity of a destructive rainstorm such as the 2010 Hurricane Tomas were to increase under climate change or if unregulated housing expanded on slopes susceptible to failure. The analysis also shows that when both scenarios are included landslide probability disproportionally increases, revealing that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. This information could be used to assess the risk and damages associated with each scenario and to identify low-regret nation-wide risk reduction and risk transfer strategies.

Figure 1: Maps of landslide probability in Saint Lucia under different ‘what if’ scenarios. The percentage (+%) indicates the increase of areas with high landslide probability.

The same method can also be applied to quantify the cost-benefit ratio of different landslide mitigation options, such as improving urban drainage or tree planting at the community/household scale. In Freetown (Sierra Leone), for example, I collaborated with the engineering firm Arup to identify those landslide hazard mitigation actions that would lead to the largest reduction in landslide probability for certain locations or types of slopes, and should thus be prioritised. The information generated through this analysis not only provides evidence to governments and investors for informing urban planning, but it might also encourage landslide probability from low to high micro-insurance in disaster prevention, where insurers offer lower premiums to reward risk-reducing behaviours.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member, Dr Elisa Bozzolan from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol.

Indian farmers’ strike continues in the shadow of COVID-19

Posted on by janet.crompton

In what is believed to be the biggest protest in history, in late November 2020 farmers from across India drove 200,000 trolleys and tractors towards Delhi’s borders in a mass protest against agricultural reforms. This was followed a few days later by a general strike involving 250 million people in both urban and rural areas of India as workers joined together to support the farmers.

The strike continues, despite the global public health crisis, which is hitting India harder than any other country in the world. Fear of COVID-19 has not deterred farmers, who have emphatically stated that regardless of whether they contract the virus, the “black laws” will kill them anyway.

The movement first began in the state of Punjab in June 2020, as farmers blocked freight railway lines in protest against these “black laws”, which increase corporate control over all aspects of the food chain from seed to sale. Farmers unions argue that the laws undermine state-controlled prices of key crops, by allowing sales outside of state mandis (markets).

The laws also enable corporations to control what contract farmers grow and how, thus reducing the bargaining power of small farmers. Corporations will be allowed to stockpile key produce and hence speculate with food, which was previously illegal. Finally, the laws provide legal immunity to corporations operating in “good faith”, thereby voiding the ability of citizens to hold agribusiness to account.

Braving tear gas and water cannons, thousands of farmers and their families descended on Delhi and transformed its busy roads into bustling camp cities, with communal “langhar” kitchens.

Undeterred by police violence, farmers fed these aggressors who beat them by day with free food by night. This act of community service not only underscored the peaceful intentions of the protests but also encapsulated one of the key ideas of the movement: “no farmers, no food”.

In the same spirit of solidarity, farmers at Delhi’s borders are responding to the rapidly escalating spread of COVID-19 in the city. They are distributing food packages and essential goods to hospitals, as well as in bus and railway stations for those leaving the capital.

Striking farmers have been supplying food to hospitals and other people in need during the COVID-19 emergency in India. Credit: EPA-EFE/STR. Source.

Farmers from numerous states, of all castes and religions, are coexisting and growing the protest movement from the soil upwards – literally, turning trenches into vegetable gardens. Many farmers refer to this movement as “andolan” – a revolution – where alliances are being forged between landless farm labourers and smallholder farmers. In a country deeply divided by caste and – increasingly – religion, this coming together around land, soil and food has powerful potential.

Women have also taken leading roles, as they push for recognition as farmers in their own right. They are exploring the intersections of caste oppression, gendered labour and sexual violence in person and in publications such as Karti Dharti – a women-led magazine sharing stories and voices from the movement.

Violent response

Despite the largely peaceful protests, farmers have been met with state repression and violence. At various points water supplies have been cut to the protest sites and internet services blocked. Undeterred, farmers have prepared the camp sites for the scorching summer heat that now envelops them.

Amnesty international has called on the Indian government to “stop escalating crackdown on protesters, farm leaders and journalists”. Eight media workers have been charged with sedition, while 100 people protesters have disappeared. In response, parliaments around the world have issued statements and debates on the right to peaceful protest in India, as well as a free and open press.

Women have been key players in the Indian farmers’ strike. EPA-EFE/Harish Tyagi. Source.

The heavy-handed government response and intransigence to the key demands of the movement adds grave doubt for farmers who are now being asked to disband protest sites in the interest of public health. It highlights the hypocrisy of being told to go home, while the ruling BJP was holding mass rallies in West Bengal.

The fear is that COVID-19 could derail the momentum of this movement, as with the protests around the Citizen Amendment Act, which were cleared in March 2020 due to enforced lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. Farmers repeat that they will leave as soon as the government repeals the laws and protects the minimum support price of key crops.

There has been a groundswell of support from around the globe, from peasant movements, the Indian diaspora community and celebrities – including Rihanna and climate activist Greta Thunberg. This movement is fighting for the principles of democracy on which the Indian state was founded and is part of a civil society movement filling in for the state, which has been found sorely wanting in its response to the calamitous consequences of COVID-19.

The “black laws” are but the latest in a long history of struggle faced by Indian farmers. India’s sprawling fields have been sites of “green revolution” experimentation since the 1960s. This has worsened water scarcity, reduced crop genetic diversity, damaged biodiversity, eroded and depleted soils, all of which has reduced soil fertility.

The financial burden of costly inputs and failing crops has fallen on farmers, leading to spiralling debts and farmer suicides. The impacts of climate change and ecologically destructive farming are primary reasons for this financial duress. However, the movement has yet to deeply address the challenges of transitioning towards socioeconomically just, climate-friendly agriculture.

Peasant movements around the world highlight the importance of collective spaces and knowledge-sharing between small farmers. The campsites in Delhi provide a unique opportunity to link socioeconomic farming struggles to their deep ecological roots. These are indeed difficult discussions, but the kisaan (farmer) movement has provided spaces to challenge caste, religious and gender-based oppression.

The movement’s strength is its broad alliances and solidarity, but it remains unclear whether it will link palpable socioeconomic injustices to environmental injustices and rights. The ecological origins of COVID-19 make these connections ever more pressing the world over.The Conversation

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Jaskiran Kaur Chohan, at the University of Bristol Vet School. Jaskiran is a political ecologist with an interdisciplinary background in the Social Sciences.

Dr Jaskiran Kaur Chohan

 

Is extreme heat an underestimated risk in Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

Evidence that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate is indisputable, having almost doubled per decade since 1981 (relative to 1880-1981). In many countries, this warming has been accompanied by more frequent and severe heatwaves – prolonged periods of significantly above-average temperatures – especially during summer months.

Heatwaves pose significant threats to human health including discomfort, heatstroke and in extreme cases, death. In the summer of 2003 (one that I am sure many remember for its tropical temperatures), these threats were clear. A European heatwave event killed over 70,000 people across the continent – over 2,000 of these deaths were in England alone. As if these statistics weren’t alarming enough, projections suggest that by 2050, such summers could occur every other year and by 2080, a similar heatwave could kill three times as many people.

Cities face heightened risks

Heat-health risks are not equally distributed. Cities face heightened risks due to the urban heat island (UHI) effect, where urban areas exhibit warmer temperatures than surrounding rural areas. This is primarily due to the concentration of dark, impervious surfaces. In the event of a heatwave, cities are therefore not only threatened by even warmer temperatures, but also by high population densities which creates greater exposure to such extreme heat.

UHIs have been observed and modelled across several of the UK’s largest cities. For example, in Birmingham an UHI intensity (the difference between urban and rural temperatures) of 9°C has been recorded. Some estimates for Manchester and London reach 10°C. However, little research has been conducted into the UK’s smaller cities, including Bristol, despite their rapidly growing populations.

Heat vulnerability

In the UK an ageing population implies that heat vulnerability will increase, especially in light of warming projections. Several other contributors to heat vulnerability are also well-established, including underlying health conditions and income. However, the relative influence of different factors is extremely context specific. What drives heat vulnerability in one city may play an insignificant role in another, making the development of tailored risk mitigation policies particularly difficult without location-specific research.

Climate resilience in Bristol

In 2018, Bristol declared ambitious intentions to be climate resilient by 2030. To achieve this, several specific targets have been put in place, including:

  • The adaptation of infrastructure to cope with extreme heat
  • The avoidance of heat-related deaths

Yet, the same report that outlines these goals also highlights an insufficient understanding of hotspots and heat risk in Bristol. This poses the question – how will Bristol achieve these targets without knowing where to target resources?

Bristol’s urban heat island

Considering the above, over the summer I worked on my MSc dissertation with two broad aims:

  1. Quantify Bristol’s urban heat island
  2. Map heat vulnerability across Bristol wards

Using a cloud-free Landsat image from a heatwave day in June 2018, I produced one of the first high-resolution maps of Bristol’s UHI (see below). The results were alarming, with several hotspots of 7-9°C in the central wards of Lawrence Hill, Easton and Southville. Maximum UHI intensity was almost 12°C, recorded at a warehouse in Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston. Though this magnitude may be amplified by the heatwave event, these findings still suggest Bristol exhibits an UHI similar to that of much larger cities including London, Birmingham and even Paris.

Image credit: Vicky Norton

Heat vulnerability in Bristol

Exploratory statistics revealed two principal determinants of an individual’s vulnerability to extreme heat in Bristol:

  1. Their socioeconomic status
  2. The combined effects of isolation, minority status and housing type.

These determinants were scored for each ward and compiled to create a heat vulnerability index (HVI). Even more concerning than Bristol’s surprising UHI intensity is that wards exhibiting the greatest heat vulnerability coincide with areas of greatest UHI intensity – Lawrence Hill and Easton (see below).

What’s also interesting about these findings is the composition of heat vulnerability in Bristol. Whilst socioeconomic status is a common determinant in many studies, the influential role of minority status and housing type appears particularly specific to Bristol. Unlike general UK projections, old age was also deemed an insignificant contributor to heat vulnerability in Bristol. Instead, the prevalence of a younger population suggests those under five years of age are of greater concern.

Image credit: Vicky Norton

Implications

But what do these findings mean for Bristol’s climate resilience endeavours? Firstly, they suggest Bristol’s UHI may be a much greater concern than previously thought, necessitating more immediate, effective mitigation efforts. Secondly, they reiterate the context specific nature of heat vulnerability and the importance of conducting location specific research. Considering UHI intensity and ward-level heat vulnerability, these findings provide a starting point for guiding adaptive and mitigative resource allocation. If Bristol is to achieve climate resilience by 2030, initial action may be best targeted towards areas most at risk – Lawrence Hill and Easton – and tailored to those most vulnerable.

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This blog is written by Vicky Norton, who has recently completed an MSc in Environmental Policy and Management run by Caboteer Dr Sean Fox.

Vicky Norton

 

 

Bees and butterflies are under threat from urbanisation – here’s how city-dwellers can help

Posted on by janet.crompton
File 20190115 152977 13ovnf5.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
All a-flutter.
Shutterstock.

Pollinators such as bees, hoverflies and butterflies, are responsible for the reproduction of many flowering plants and help to produce more than three quarters of the world’s crop species. Globally, the value of the services provided by pollinators is estimated at between US$235 billion and US$577 billion.

It’s alarming, then, that pollinators are under threat from factors including more intense farming, climate change, disease and changing land use, such as urbanisation. Yet recent studies have suggested that urban areas could actually be beneficial, at least for some pollinators, as higher numbers of bee species have been recorded in UK towns and cities, compared with neighbouring farmland.

To find out which parts of towns and cities are better for bees and other pollinators, our research team carried out fieldwork in nine different types of land in four UK cities: Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh.

An easy win

Urban areas are a complex mosaic of different land uses and habitats. We surveyed pollinators in allotments (also known as community gardens), cemeteries and churchyards, residential gardens, public parks, other green spaces (such as playing fields), nature reserves, road verges, pavements and man-made surfaces such as car parks or industrial estates.

Perfect for pollinators.
Shutterstock.

Our results suggest that allotments are good places for bees and other pollinating insects, and that creating more allotments will benefit the pollinators in towns and cities. Allotments are beneficial for human health and well-being, and also help boost local food production.

In the UK, there are waiting lists for allotments in many areas, so local authorities and urban planners need to recognise that creating more allotment sites is a winning move, which will benefit people, pollinators and sustainable food production.

Good tips for green thumbs

We also recorded high numbers of pollinating insects in gardens. Residential gardens made up between a quarter and a third of the total area of the four cities we sampled, so they’re really a crucial habitat for bees and other pollinators in cities. That’s why urban planners and developers need to create new housing developments with gardens.

But it’s not just the quantity of gardens that matters, it’s the quality, too. And there’s a lot that residents can do to ensure their gardens provide a good environment for pollinators.

Rather than paving, decking and neatly mown lawns, gardeners need to be planting flowers, shrubs and bushes that are good for pollinators. Choose plants that have plenty of pollen and nectar that is accessible to pollinators, and aim to have flowers throughout the year to provide a constant supply of food. Our research suggests that borage and lavender are particularly attractive for pollinators.

Now that’s a happy bee.
Shutterstock.

Often plants and seeds in garden centres are labelled with pollinator logos to help gardeners choose suitable varieties – although a recent study found that that ornamental plants on sale can contain pesticides that are harmful to pollinators, so gardeners should check this with retailers before buying.
Weeds are important too; our results suggest that dandelions, buttercups and brambles are important flowers for pollinators. So create more space for pollinators by mowing less often to allow flowers to grow, and leaving weedy corners, since undisturbed areas make good nesting sites.

An urban refuge

Parks, road verges and other green spaces make up around a third of cities, however our study found that they contain far fewer pollinators than gardens. Our results suggest that increasing the numbers of flowers in these areas, potentially by mowing less often, could have a real benefit for pollinators (and save money). There are already several initiatives underway to encourage local authorities to mow less often.

Roundhay Park in Leeds: not a flower in sight.
Shutterstock.

Ensuring there are healthy populations of pollinators will benefit the native plants and ecosystems in urban areas, as well as anyone who is growing food in their garden or allotment. Towns and cities could act as important refuges for pollinators in the wider landscape, especially since agricultural areas can be limited in terms of the habitat they provide.

It’s crucial for local authorities, urban planners, gardeners and land managers to do their bit to improve the way towns and cities are managed for pollinators. National pollinator strategies already exist for several countries, and local pollinator strategies and action plans are helping to bring together the key stakeholders in cities. Wider adoption of this type of united approach will help to improve towns and cities for both the people and pollinators that live there.The Conversation

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Katherine Baldock, NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cities’ contributions to the global SDGs: A Bristol view

Posted on by janet.crompton

Earlier this month, people from around the globe gathered in New York for the annual review of the world’s progress towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an event known as the ‘High Level Political Forum’ (HLPF). These globally-agreed goals were developed in 2015, providing a vision for what the world should look like in 2030. Covering all three dimensions of sustainability through 17 Goals, 169 targets and 244 indicators, the SDGs have been called ‘the closest thing the world has to a strategy’.

This year the HLPF focused on 6 of these Goals, including sustainable cities and communities, SDG 11. The inclusion of cities as a specific goal is a success, and it is the first time that a subnational unit has been included in a UN statistical reporting framework.

But cities have an important role to play in meeting all of the Goals, beyond just SDG11. Urbanisation is increasingly seen as a key cross cutting element in almost every aspect of sustainable development. Forecasts suggest that by 2050 almost 70% of the world’s people will live in cities. The concentration of people living and working in urban areas creates acute sustainable development challenges in cities. And what happens within individual cities can have far-reaching environmental impacts on resource use, pollution and carbon emissions in far-away places. Because local sustainable development challenges have national and even international implications, cities have the power and the opportunity to make progress towards the global SDGs, by tackling city-level challenges through innovative technical and organisational solutions.

Indeed, the 2017 HLPF declaration highlighted “the need to take appropriate action towards localizing and communicating the [SDGs] at all levels, from the national to the community and grassroots level […] Efforts should be made to reach out to all stakeholders, including subnational and local authorities.” (para 28)

So, to achieve the ambitious SDGs by 2030, cities must be fully engaged with all the goals, and can work with each other to share learnings, as well as interact at national and global policy levels. For example, New York City presented the first-ever official city-level review of progress towards the SDGs at the HLPF 2018 linked with their OneNYC approach – and invited other cities to work with them.

Despite Bristol’s many successes, we continue to face important challenges. Prominent among these is intense inequality across economic, social and environmental domains: such as income inequality, poor air quality and persistent gaps in health and education outcomes across the city. The SDGs offer a framework for taking on these challenges in an integrated way to achieve sustainable and inclusive prosperity that leaves no-one and nowhere – including nature – behind.

For the last few years, Bristol has been grappling with how it can best engage with the SDGs through an alliance of stakeholders from across the city. This work and their views have informed our ‘Driving the SDGs agenda at a city level in Bristol’ report, released during this year’s HLPF, where UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development and partners launched an initial review of UK progress ‘Measuring Up’.

This tells the story of the Bristol SDG Alliance, formed in 2016 to advocate for the practical use of the SDGs in Bristol – to ‘localise’ the Goals to the city – and shares key learnings.

Hosted by Bristol Green Capital Partnership, in part because the SDG agenda integrates the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability, the Alliance has submitted evidence to a parliamentary inquiry, commissioned an SDGs & Bristol report, and facilitated an innovative academic role to link SDG research and engagement in Bristol.

In this role, I have been able to work collaboratively with Bristol City Council on behalf of the Alliance to integrate the SDGs into the emerging One City Plan. In addition, many businesses and other organisations in the city appreciate the relevance of the SDGs to their work, such as Airbus and Triodos Bank, among others.

As we move forward, we will be grappling with some of the challenges facing other cities working to localise the SDGs. For example, how best to monitor progress.

This is a challenge even at the national level, with the UK’s national statistics office still working hard to assess and collect the data to report on the SDGs nearly 3 years after they were agreed – see the national reporting platform. Such monitoring challenges are more acute at a city level, with extra complexities and fewer resources available to address them.

For the SDGs to be achieved by 2030, challenges such as these will need to be overcome by cities. The theme for 2019’s SDG review is ‘inclusiveness and equality’, where the UK will also undertake its first official national review. Bristol is well-placed to contribute in 2019. Collectively the city may wish to follow New York’s initiative and report alongside the UK on our city’s progress next year.

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This blog is written by Allan Macleod, SDG research and engagement associate working across Bristol Green Capital Partnership, Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol.  It has been reposted with kind permission from the Bristol Green Capital blog.  View the original blog.

Allan Macleod

Grey Britain: Misery, urbanism & neuroaesthetics

Posted on by janet.crompton
View of London from the Sky Garden (source: skygarden.london).
 
“We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions. We thrash about and are a danger to ourselves and the rest of life.” – E.O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of the Earth (2012).

 

In a previous article I have discussed the use of simple patterns to interpret the complexity of nature and the human interface with it. Here, I will illustrate this concept on a larger canvas, discussing this interface, between nature and social systems, more thoroughly. This final article, in the series on inter-disciplinary work I have written for the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment, is partially motivated by my personal interest in the cycle of urbanism, the associated architecture and concepts. It is also motivated by a project I followed closely during a past flirtation with living and working in London and the comparable changes I see happening around me in Bristol, where I currently live and work.
Billboard #1 from London is Changing project (source: londonischanging.org).

‘London is Changing’ was an arts project undertaken by Dr. Rebecca Ross at Central St. Martins in 2015. It highlighted the effects of economic policy in the capital by displaying the stories of individuals relocating in, out and within the capital, out of choice and necessity, on billboards around the city. On one level, this project introduced me to the plight of individuals whose movements are determined by expropriation, economic policy or various other processes largely beyond their control. On another level, it gave me an insight into the emotional response this change in environment can invoke in those undertaking such change.

Indeed, as modern society has ridden the wave of an economy of concentrated wealth creation the transient notion of moving somewhere new for education or employment has become a perceived norm. Yet, there is a polarising undercurrent to this wave, in which generations of individuals face the prospect of never being able to afford to permanently root themselves to the environment, where the terms ‘gentrification’ and ‘displacement’ have come to define the nature of settlement and where our demand, and in some cases, expectation, of a ‘home’ is placing an unsustainable strain on ourselves, materials, space and the environment at large. Be it due to social, economic or environmental causes, these trends are effectively driving people further from their familiar habitat and immediate social connections, which leads to social destabilisation – a key contributing factor of societal vulnerability.

Billboard #2 from London is Changing project (source: londonischanging.org).
The inter-environmental patterns of displacement and resettlement are as intriguing as they are worrying. Similarly, a concept related to this physical displacement, the notion of intra-environmental displacement is one which can set the foundations of an unstable social system. This is to say, an emotional displacement characterised by a detachment created through rapid physical change of the surrounding environment, one that can enhance the disconnection between people and their environment and, in some cases; other people. Notionally linked to gentrification, urban renewal or regeneration is part of the cycle of urbanisation and whilst it does not immediately or physically displace a person from the environment, it’s effects are becoming more documented and this is to a largely negative fanfare.
Drawing on the personal experience of having worked and socialised with residents of the recently regenerated Heygate, Aylesbury, the (old) south Kilburn Estates in London and coupling this with my academic work and interest, I have given great consideration to the phenomena of intra-environmental connection and disconnection. Indeed, the initial results of my own research with flooding and social systems is conspecific with the kind of systematic social change discussed in this article, differing only in temporal scale, whereby enhanced social interaction has the potential to negate the detrimental effects of uninvited change, be it rapid onset as is the case with a flood inundation or prolonged onset via environmental redevelopment, to the structure of the social system. Observing the changes currently taking place in Bristol, at Temple Quarter and along the southern bank of the Avon, I feel urgency in the need to communicate the detrimental potential of poor foresight, as well as the positive potential of implementing new approaches, in urban development and renewal of any kind.

The Biophilic Hypothesis, P2P Urbanism & Neuroasthetics

Biophilia is a term that was first introduced by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in 1973’s ‘The anatomy of human destructiveness’ to describe a “passionate love of life and all that is alive”. One only needs to pause for a moment to consider this term in relation to current global affairs to concur with the author in his estimation that it is distinctly lacking from the zeitgeist of our time.
Biologist and foremost proponent of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson later utilised the term to describe “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life”. Wilson has suggested that this urge, to affiliate and connect with one another, other species and the natural environment at large is a biological necessity in the continuation of our species. Furthermore, Wilson has also suggested that a true or complete biophilic environment would be one that provides an appropriate habitat and home whilst also naturally connecting the human to the environment via the promotion of natural social and environmental connections. The biophilic principle has acted as the inspiration and catalyst for a divergence in thinking related to modern urban theory.

The structure of life I have described in buildings is deeply and inextricably connected with the human person and with the innermost nature of human feeling

 – Christopher Alexander, Nature of Order (1963).
Nikos Salingaros and Christopher Alexander, leading design theorists, polymaths and ardent critics of modern architectural design, have suggested in their works that a historic shift in urban architectural design accompanying post-world war II urbanisation, based on a supposed ideal concept of order over function or form, has become a pseudo-standard leading to a widespread loss of environmental identity at the human scale within the built environment initially through sprawl and latterly grand-scale, monoculture.
This loss of identity occurs through a number of routes, aesthetically via design or use of distally sourced materials, unclear structural purpose via desired use of the structure superseding local need or location via dramatic replacement of a visually recognisable building of historic or social importance. Salingaros and Alexander have suggested that this loss of identity lends itself to a loss of societal orientation and has partially or fully led to the proliferation of all things from social polarisation to the increasing rates of mental ill health in urbanised areas.
Drawing influence from Wilson’s concept of concilience, Salingaros has proposed many alternative solutions for the reconciliation of urban development at the human scale, solutions which are based on rigour with a view to addressing future human needs and ambitions. One of the most ambitious and rigorous of these solutions is P2P Urbanism.
P2P Urbanism is a process of open-source urban intervention carried out cooperatively across a spectrum of people and agencies with vested interest in the evolution of their urban environment, not just architects and city planners. It is primarily based on the application of analogous techniques of file sharing and open-source software with design patterns generated by Christopher Alexander. The idea underpinning P2P being that it is a reflection of the human elements available for input and so, theoretically, will reflect the very needs and ambitions of those engaging with the process. Thus, with greater engagement, across a broad spectrum of human groups and agencies, P2P can potentially address the need for reconnection of the urban environment at a human scale whilst offering progressive alternatives to urban sprawl and monoculture through Alexander’s designs; a potentially true reflection of us in the environment within which we reside. With Bristol’s burgeoning IT-centric industry, the potential a concept like P2P has to illicit a desirable trend of urbanisation, one which fosters a reconnection between people and place, is great.
Jinu Kitchely states, in her 2015 article on Fractals in Architecture, that “architecture as an art form enjoys the privilege of spatiality in addressing human perception and sense.” A complete biophilic environment would be one which fully addresses human perception and sense, “architects who have responded to this instinctive need, by going beyond structural constraints and catered to the emotional needs of the user, have historically achieved much more than the creation of mere shelters.” An obvious source of inspiration for the biophilic environment is nature, with many architects and designers “probing vehemently into the nature of natural forms and organisms to identify and understand the great concepts of the master designer.”
A key concept of the biophilic principle, as applied to architectural design, is the incorporation of nature’s morphology iteratively in the urban re-shaping process. I have previously spoken about how complexity arises from fractal systems, the basic quality of fractal geometry being that it is iteratively-defined – it must be described in terms of steps involving the result of previous steps. Over infinity, fractal generation is recursive and so, in theory is infinitely complex. Benoit Mandelbrot stated in his seminal book ‘The Fractal Geometry of Nature’ that the physical manifestation of this theory, of objects substituting themselves for copies of themselves, can be seen all around us and is the basic process that underpins all living things. Christopher Alexander’s analogue for this is that of a bone’s form which, evenly distributes structural stress across its surface, emerges as a result of a biological program telling cells to add bone mass where stress is likely to be greatest and so is an example of physical and structural feedback shaping the object.
Analysis from Richard Taylor’s research suggests that eye patterns traced from observations of Jackson Pollock’s paintings (left) elicit a significant physiological response in the posterior of the human brain that reduces stress through pattern recognition (right) (source: blogs.uoregon.edu).
Professor of Physics, Psychology and Art at the University of Oregon, Richard Taylor has created an interdisciplinary team that investigates the physiological response of humans when they observe these fractal patterns. Termed fractal expressionism, using work produced by Pollock and Escher, Taylor’s team has found that the format in which people examine these patterns can elicit a positive physiological response, one which reduces stress as the fractal structure of the human visual cortex resonates with the fractal image identified. From the discovery of fire by early humans to the evolution of contemporary artistic concepts, neural and physiological sense and response to natural, iterative patterns of the world around us has been influential in directing the evolution of the human brain and its emotive response system. From this understanding, it seems logical to assume that the structures we build in the environment around us possess the potential to have an impact on this system too.

Connection & disconnection

 

 

Images of the Heygate Estate, Elephant and Castle, London taken in 2014 pre-demolition, post-expropriation. (source: top middle by Tom O’Shea. Bottom: LDNGRAFITTI.co.uk
Now, as this colloquy reaches a coda it feels important to illustrate some examples of successes and failures in respect of that which is written above. The images directly above, taken of the Heygate Estate in London once all residents had been removed from the large estate complex; some forcibly others under enforced willingness – as their lifelong homes were subject to a compulsory re-purchase at 40% of their actual value. The images depict discontent and anger, indeed more damning than the enormous displacement of a strong community under duress, is that the majority of flats and houses built on the land of the Heygate have been sold to overseas investors for a price vastly above what the old flats were purchased for. It is clear that this style of urbanisation is one which fosters a disconnection between people and place.
The iconic Trellick Tower, Westbourne Park, London. Considered an eyesore in its early days and symbol of failure for the utopian architectural ideals of the ‘streets in the sky’ movement of the 60’s. The brutalist structure is now credited as a glowing success of how distinct architectural style can connect a community (source: architectsjournal.co.uk).
Just one and a half miles away from the Heygate is Trellick tower. Ernö Goldfinger’s brutalist 70’s masterpiece, designed as a positive response to the ‘architecture of doom’ employed by the Nazi’s during WWII. The tower employed biophilic facets of utilitarian materials and purpose to create an iconic aesthetic that emphasised robust and reliable living spaces for residents with community as a centrepiece. In the years since its completion, the tower has had a fair share of criticism but has since emerged as an iconic element of the London skyline, an aesthetic centre-point of the city’s urban fabric and one which is now seen as a triumph of biophilic ideals. Much like Corbusier’s Chandigarh and Bofil’s La Murilla Roja, Trellick made the needs of the human scale a priority, with form and function evolving from there. Chandigarh is consistently seen as the standard of how biophilic ideals can be applied to planned cities, Corbusier’s design for the city was based on the human body, and Bofil’s La Murilla, a community housing project in Alicante, looked to connect the residents with the cliffs into which it was built and the sea below, whilst providing a stimulating and iconic aesthetic to foster the sense of a unique community.
Images of La Murilla Roja (top) and The Palace of Assembly, Chandigarh (bottom) (source: Wikipedia).
These iconic buildings and cities contain unique community characteristics, and this is because they incorporate a consideration for just that. As British cities expand to cope with demand and greenfield sites are increasingly developed to provide affordable housing, the concepts discussed above, and examples highlighted throughout, must be considered with a view to sustainable progress. Trellick tower, Chandigarh and the like provide an iconic representation of a time and a place in our relationship with the built and natural environments, they can provide inspiration for what is possible.
Concepts like Salingaros’ P2P urbanism offer an inclusive approach for the future development of cities, currently or due to be, undergoing great change; like Bristol. Ultimately, systematic social vulnerability is a complex convolvulus of interactions on a vast spectrum of scales, addressing it should be a priority and opening the avenues of investigation outlined above is one way to begin.
Sir Denys Lasdun, said of the architect’s job as being “Not to give a client not what he wants but what he never dreamed that he wanted; and when he gets it, he recognises it as something he wanted all the time.” By considering how to connect us with our urban environments more, through the conduit of nature and the biophilic, the author believes that the process of urbanisation can afford us with a sense of place far beyond our dreams and more importantly, one which we should have had all the time. Failing this, follow the advice of the billboard below and enjoy the gifts of nature before they are consumed by the belligerent grey beast of indifferent urbanisation.
Billboard #3 from London is Changing project (source: londonischanging.org).

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member, Thomas O’Shea, a Ph.D. Researcher at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. His interests span Complex Systems, Hydrodynamics, Risk and Resilience and Machine Learning.  Please direct any desired correspondence regarding the above to his university email at: t.oshea@bristol.ac.uk.
Thomas O’Shea
Read Thomas’ other blogs in this series:

Resilience and urban design

Posted on by janet.crompton

In this article, inspired by the movement of open spaces in cities across the world and resilience theory [1], Shima Beigi argues that city and human resilience are tightly interlinked and it is possible to positively influence both through utilising the transformative power of open spaces in novel ways.

Human resilience makes cities more resilient

Future cities provide a fertile ground to integrate and synthesise different properties of space and help us realise our abilities to become more resilient. Rapid urbanisation brings with it a need to develop cohesive and resilient communities, so it is crucial to discuss how we can better design our cities. In the future, urban design must harness the transformative function of open spaces to help people explore new sociocultural possibilities and increase our resilience: resilient people help form the responsible citizenry that is necessary for the emergence of more resilient urban systems.

Cities are complex adaptive systems

Cities are complex adaptive systems which consist of many interacting parts with different degrees of flexibility, and open urban spaces hold the potential for embedding flexible platforms into future urban design; they invoke the possibility of adopting a different set of values and behaviours related to our cities, such as flexible structures designed to change how we imagine the collective social space or intersubjective space.

Transportation grids are for functional movement and coordination in cities, but open spaces can be seen as avenues for personal growth and development, social activities, learning, collective play and gaming (figure 1). They help us adjust and align our perception of reality in real-time and for free. All we need is our willingness to let go of the old and allow the new to guide us toward evolution, transcendence and resilience.

Figure 1: Boulevard Anspach, Belgium, Brussels. Images credit Shima Beigi

Open spaces also encourage another important process: the emergence of a fluid sense of one’s self as an integral part of a city’s design. Urban design can help citizens feel invited to explore and unearth parts of the internal landscape.

Mindfulness engineering and the practice of resiliencing

Drawing on my research on resilience of people, places, critical infrastructure systems and socio-ecological systems, I have collected 152 different ways of defining resilience and here I propose an urban friendly view of resilience:

“resilience is about mastering change and is a continuous process of becoming and expanding one’s radius of comfort zone until the whole world becomes mapped into one’s awareness”.

In this view, our continuous exposure to new conditions helps us align with a new tempo of change. Resilience is naturally embedded in all of us and we need to find those key principles and pathways through which we can practise our natural potential for resilience and adaptability to change on a daily basis. This is what I call ‘mindfulness engineering‘ and the practice of ‘resiliencing‘. There is no secret to resilience; Ann S. Masten even calls it an ‘ordinary magic‘.

Building resilient and sustainable cities

Future cities provide us with the opportunity to increase our resilience. There is no fixed human essence and we are always in the state of dynamic unfolding. So the paradox for the future is this: the only thing fixed about the future is a constant state of change. As existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said, “the only thing repeated is the impossibility of repetition.” It is only through this shift of perspective to becoming in tune with one’s adaptation and resilience style that we can change our mental models and become better at handling change.

Footnote

[1] The movement of resilience as the capacity to withstand setbacks and continue to grow started in early 70s. Today, the concept of resilience has transformed to a platform for global conversation on the future of human development across the world.

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This blog is by Cabot Institute member Dr Shima Beigi from the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Engineering.  Shima’s research looks at the Resilience and Sustainability of Complex Systems.

This blog has been republished with kind permission from the Government Office for Science’s Future of Cities blog.

Bristol is buzzing, how the city is helping pollinators

Posted on by janet.crompton

There has been a substantial amount of press coverage recently on the plight of our pollinators. They are now less abundant and widespread than they were in the 1950s. A number of threats are responsible, including habitat loss, disease, extreme weather, climate change and pesticide use.

There is not one smoking gun among these threats, but rather the combination that has endangered some species in the UK. Loss of wild flower rich habitat (due to intensive agriculture, industrialisation and urbanisation) escalates the effect of disease, extreme weather, climate change and pesticide use. Without food or shelter, pollinators are more vulnerable.

Whilst visiting the University of Bristol Botanic Garden a few weeks ago, I noticed the abundance of pollinators busily visiting many different flowers from the orchid look-a-like flower of Impatiens tinctoria to the swathes of Rudbeckia sp. and Verbena bonariensis. This year saw the 6th year of the University of Bristol Botanic Gardens hosting the Bee and Pollination Festival in September. The Community Ecology Group from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences was exhibiting and promoting their research as well as the exciting Get Bristol Buzzing Initiative.

To find out more about pollinator research at the University, I met up with Dr Katherine Baldock, a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow from the School of Biological Sciences and the Cabot Institute, to discuss the group’s work.

“Most people know that pollinators are important, but quite often don’t know what to do to help them, “ explained Katherine. “And this is where our research at the University comes into play”.

The aim of Katherine’s fellowship is to improve the value of the UK’s urban areas for pollinators by working with various stakeholders, such as city councils, conservation practitioners and the landscape industry.

Translating science into solutions

Up until 2014, Katherine worked on the Urban Pollinators Project, which is researching insect pollinators and the plants they forage on in urban habitats.

Kath Baldock

Building upon research from this project and her current Fellowship, Katherine and her Bristol colleagues have contributed to the development of  a Greater Bristol Pollinator Strategy (2015-2020). The University research group has teamed up with Bristol City Council, the Avon Wildlife Trust, Bristol Friends of the Earth, Buglife, South Gloucestershire Council and the University of the West of England to implement this with the aim of protecting existing habitat and increasing pollinator habitat in the Greater Bristol area.

The group is also raising awareness of the importance of pollinators to a wide-ranging audience within the city and further afield. This is the first local pollinator strategy within the UK and follows closely in the wake of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ National Pollinator Strategy launched in 2014. It will help to promote aspects of the national strategy relevant to urban areas and hopefully set a precedent for the development of other local pollinator strategies throughout the UK.

The local pollinator strategy outlines actions that will help fulfill the strategy aims, including:

  • formation of a Local Pollinator Forum intended to share knowledge and best practice,
  • establishment of a joined-up approach to pollinator conservation by linking projects through the ‘Get Bristol Buzzing’ Initiative,
  • working with the public in local areas to explain actions they can take as individuals.

“Urban green spaces are important corridors for wildlife and help to provide linkages across the country”, explained Katherine. I envisaged a series of insect aerial motorways linking the whole of the UK, invisible threads connecting countryside, urban fringe and city centres.

The bee link-up

The Get Bristol Buzzing Initiative is doing just that, as one of its strategic aims with the local pollinator strategy for 2016-2020, is to “Map pollinator habitat and identify target sites that allow habitat networks and stepping stones to be created to enable pollinators to move through urban areas”.

Katherine talked about how engaging the public at ground level was really important to Get Bristol Buzzing. The initiative is the pollinator component of My Wild City, a project whose vision is for people in Bristol to help transform spaces into a city-wide nature reserve. A number of interactive maps have been created that allow people to add what they have been doing in their area to help wildlife. The Get Buzzing Initiative will feed into these maps. Kath said,

‘The fact that you can add yourselves onto a map makes the Get Buzzing Initiative really visually appealing to people and much more personal.”

So, what can you do at home to help urban pollinators?

  • Plant for pollinators. Think about what plants you have in your garden. Could you change the planting or improve on it to make it more attractive to pollinators? Think about growing species that have nectar and pollen rich flowers and let your lawn grow longer to allow plants to flower.
  • Avoid pesticides. Most gardeners like their plants to remain pest free but avoid the temptation to use pesticides and accept the fact that you will lose some plants to pests. Instead try to encourage wildlife that will devour those pests or cultivate plants that will deter pests.
  • Provide habitat. As pollinators need a home, you can always make your own nest boxes if you want to give your pollinating visitors a helping hand by drilling holes in a log or by bundling up lengths of hollow sticks such as bamboo. Visit the Botanic Garden’s bee hotel for inspiration!

‘Setting aside a wild bit of garden can help pollinators by providing food, but provides nesting sites too’, remarked Katherine.

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This blog was written by Helen Roberts.  It has been republished with kind permission from the University of Bristol’s Botanic Gardens blog.

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