People hear a lot about the decline of bees, about the lack of pollinators, but what are pollinators? more importantly, what do they do for us and what do we do for them?
The group of pollinators is very wide, not only honey bees, which belong to one specific family. In fact, in Spain we have more than 1,000 species of bees from six different families, 75% of bees are solitary and live on the ground and with more than 20,000 species of bees in the world they have evolved and are organised in many different ways.
Other pollinators are birds, mammals and reptiles because plants are very clever – they have been on earth for many millions of years longer than we have! And that results in greater evolution and adaptation. Plants have developed sophisticated methods of attraction to achieve their reproductive purposes because the pollen has to reach its destination! They use everything from lizards to flies and bats, not forgetting air and water, which also help in pollination.
But if there are so many means for pollination, why are pollinators, in particular bees, so important? Well, at least, in this case, size and shape matter! There are all kinds of insects, small, fat, long, with very long tongues, in short, many sizes! Just as there are many shapes and sizes of flowers and pollen grains because plants are very sybaritic.
Plants have evolved in such a way that each one has developed its own system, some of them very exclusive, to avoid pollen from other plants, that is why there are so many smells, to make a first selection of “be my guests!”; and many sizes, some bees have to stick out their proboscis or “tongue” up to 20mm to get to the food; some, like the passionflower, have very large stamen and pistils, and can only be pollinated by large bumblebees; others are complicated, like the snapdragon flower, where the bee has to get inside as if it were a cave; and others are smaller, likedaisies, which need a small insect and are therefore pollinated, for example, by small black and yellow striped flies, which are the hoverflies. The sunflower is a large daisy and therefore needs a larger pollinator such as the honey bee. There are thousands of families of bees of different sizes, ranging from 4-5 mm to 30-35 mm (honey bees measure between 15 and 20 mm).
Both flowers, sunflower and daisy, have large yellow or white “petals” around them (which are actually ligule) and a bunch of little yellow flowers in the centre from which the seeds come out (which in sunflowers we call pipas). Next time you pass by a park, pick up a daisy and look closely at the yellow part, they are all little flowers! With their stamens, stigmas and all the parts of a flower that we hardly remember from when we studied them at school!
Cut of solitary bee nest. Source: Luis Óscar Aguado
Colours are another attraction mechanism for pollinators to detect them from far away! With our eyesight, all colours look the same to us, but with their special vision, they see the colours of the flowers differently. In the end, plants have made insects and pollinators evolve as pollen carriers, and in return, they provide delicacies in the form of fruit, seeds, pollen, nectar, etc. As you can see, there are numerous mechanisms to attract the right pollinator, so if the population of one disappears in a short period of time, the plant cannot adapt and even less reproduce.
Bee laying an egg on a bamboo cane. Source: Maria González
Many pollinators obtain food rewards from plants, but they do not feed exclusively on them like reptiles or birds, but bees do, they depend exclusively on plants for food. Both their larvae and the adult insect feed on floral products such as nectar and pollen. And as we have seen, not all flowers feed all pollinators.
So how can we help pollinators?
We can build them a shelter, depending on the family of bees they have different forms of housing or social grouping. Some build galleries in the ground where they live, so placing a pot in the window is enough; others in holes in logs or pieces of wood, even shells!. So a simple and space-saving way is to put up a hotel for solitary bees. It is very simple, consisting of a bundle of cut bamboo canes or a piece of wood with holes of different diameters between 5-25 mm, with a base, that is, that does not go through the wood and without cracks, as these are possible entrances for parasites and predators. There the bees will lay their eggs, which they will leave with the nectar or pollen collected and cover it up, and after a year the new bees will leave and go and look for another hole. So there is no danger of being stung. Bees don’t live there, they just lay their eggs, they are solitary, they don’t form hives, they don’t form communities, they sleep on flowers and branches.
Solitary bees don’t sting! Well yes, but not like honey bees, I mean, many bees die when they sting you, solitary bees do not form communities, as they do not have to defend it, they are not aggressive, they do not attack, they do not sting, this makes it a good idea to install this type of shelters in schools, children can get close and see how many holes are plugged, and count the bees they have helped.
Also, these bees only collect food for their own food and larvae, so they don’t need to collect so much, others need food to raise all their offspring, and others need food for the whole colony and humans, so if you disturb them with your hand, most of them leave, they don’t want trouble, attacking you costs them their lives, but others are more insistent because they need a lot of food and the closer you are to the hive, like the honey bees, the more aggressive they can become and attack.
Bee hotel with two holes fulfill located in CARTIF. Photo: María González.
This is why there are special regulations for keeping beehives, which are considered a type of livestock farming (beekeeping or honey farming) and have to comply with requirements regarding distances to populations, etc. It even has to respect the distance between them, since, if there is little food, it attacks other pollinators, such as solitary bees, as they are competing for food.
It is also important to have flowers all year round, for them and for us, there are many native plants with different flowering periods so that they have food all year round, in different sizes for bees of all sizes.
How do they help us? The best-known part of the work of pollinators is that of pollination. 80% of plants depend on them, and many of them are responsible for providing us with food. 75% of crops currently need pollination, and this includes the crops needed to feed livestock, so the production of livestock by-products also depends on them.
Pollinators module, module with flowers during all the year located in CARTIF. Source: María González
Pollinators are therefore our allies, and it is thanks to them that a large part of natural and urban plant communities and our food is maintained. Climate change, pesticides, agricultural intensification, the continuous clearing and mowing of parks and fields, including the proliferation of beehives, are causing their population to decline rapidly. Moreover, we still have a lot to learn about them, so it is very necessary to help them consciously and rationally, and not only at the level of experts, but also at the social level, all of us can help their conservation, taking care of pollinators and cultivating more flowers around us, since without flowers there are no pollinators and vice versa.
Bibliography: Curro Molina & Ignasi Bartomeus. 2019. Guía de campo de las abejas de España. Esditorial Tundra, Castellón. 250pp. 19’5 x 12’5 cm. ISBN 978-84-16702-77-0.
The education that people receive during all his life it´ s been influenced by the environment in which we live. When we are young and we start to be conscious about the world, the society usually provide us with the models and with the level of knowledge that it is consider, in general, necessary. The families, the neighbourhood, health professionals and the school maybe are the ones that more influence exercise because from the adult society it is believed that they are the ones that can help us the most to teach the level of minimal culture that it is considered, as standard, necessary. Without entering into the discussion of the more appropriate educative model, the right thing is that nowadays we give a lot of emphasis to the type of education that it has to be offer in schools and in other education centers.
From the project LIFE myBUILDINGisGREEN, in which CARTIF takes part, we want to explore how incorporating healthy and re-naturalized spaces in schools, can help to, in addition to adapt the buildings to the climate change effects, to form people and to increase the culture in childhood.
Schools have a huge importance in girls and boys, as it is where they spend most part of their childhood and the new generations also begin to develop as individuals. On one side, they begin to acquire basic knowledge that is part of the colective culture and that in different degree humans are using. It is also where they begin to acquire values and reference models.
On the other side, the school building and its design it also has a huge influence in the learning, as it affect to the environmental conditions where lessons are developed. The humidity and temperature levels in the classes are relationed with the learning capacity 1,2,3,4. High temperatures could have a significative impact in the students efficiency, inhibit learning and generate stress. The interior thermic conditioning and the air renovation levels is a theme that was not taken into account in the construction of most of the schools that are nowadays in use and, in consequence, the environmental conditions of the education centers most of the times are not adequate. Should not be accepted that lessons can be develop with temperatures and air relative humidities below or beyond the range that it is established in the actual regulation (as it is the RITE5 case in Spain). Maybe, because of the singularity and importance of the schools, the standars should be even more restrictives that those considered by the regulation. In this sense, using natural solutions can be exploited the principles of the bioclimatic architecture to improve the thermal comfort of people inside the buildings. Moreover, these type of natural solutions also allow to improve the conditions in the outdoor play and physical activity areas, improving the quality of the learning environment.
But in this sense, from LIFE myBUILDINGisGREEN wants to go further and saw that the actual design of the buildings and playgrounds where dominate hard materials, in which it hasn´ t take into account bioclimatic architecture solutions and in which it seems that the comfort of the propper users it has been sacrified in pursuit of other aspects such as the reduction of the maintenance cost or seeking to keep children´ s soling to a minimum, it is not the most propper from different points of view.
The fault of natural ground, the low presence of trees or bushes and of other vegetation makes schools places in which frequently the presence of nature is avoided. From our point of view, this conception of education spaces drives away the new generations from nature and can influence in the perception of how urbanised spaces should be.
However, the current knowledge tell us that society has to go the other way if it is to solve long-term problems or at least if we want to adapt us to the consequences of the climate change. If we don´ t start teaching child the coexistence and the respect to the nature, the propper management of the resources and to modify most of the behaviours we carry out, it will be more difficult to deal the challenge that we have in front. Society has to act from a lot of points of view, but we can´´ t forgot that those that nowadays enjoy their childhood are the ones that would have to face this challenge in the next decades. From LIFE myBUILDINGisGREEN we believe that increasing the contact of child with the nature and making it participants of their beneficial effects will allow us creating a future society more prepared to face the challenges that are coming.
We leave for another day talking about how it also affects the education in the society, not only in the childhood, the type of urban spaces we live in. Have at its disposal of parks and green areas near our houses or work areas, the presence of green infrastructures and biodiversity in the streets and the management of social challenges using natural solutions instead of using always “hard” solutions and that they only have an athropocentric view of problems. This anthropocentric vision also tends to forget the weakest, or those who complain the least.
5 The operative temperature recomended by the RITE is: In summer: between 23ºC and 25ºC (front 23ºC and 27ºC by the INSHT). In winter: between 21ºC and 23ºC (front 17ºC and 24ºC by the INSHT). The relative humidity marked is between the 45-60% in summer and between the 40-50% in winter.
On 2o July I could not stop myself from thinking about Jeff Bezos. He made a short journey to space, organizing his own private trip. There were plenty of headlines. And many different opinions on the subject.
Was the issue that was of concern to me if he was returned from space safe and sound?. Well, not exactly.
My concern was not in how much the space trip cost (or maybe yes), not in thinking if his decision had a coherent basis (or maybe yes) or in the high-impact maedia coverage (or maybe yes). The problem was that I couldn´ t get out of my mind the environmental impact of the trip, from a life cycle perspective.
After the trip, Jeff Bezos said its spaceflight revealed the fragility of Earth.
But was his trip a sustainable initiative for this fragiel Earth?
Jeff Bezos spaceflight. Source: France 24
Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, shifting its focus towards the economic, social and environmental development.
To be able to say that the environmental part of the sustainability is being considered, it is needed to evaluate the impact and communicate the result through effective and transparent communication indicators, such as the carbon footprint. It estimates the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted during the production, processing and retailing of goods and/or services, considering their life cycle and using the global warming potential as the only indicator.
It seems that we are becoming aware of the importance of improving energy efficiency at home or using the pblic transport, but we continue to maintain many unsustainable practices in our day to day. For instance. I would ask you to think about the energy consumption required by your daily interactions on the internet. Then, multiply this number by 4,200 billion Internet users.
“Houston, we have a problem!”
Knowing which activities are the largest sources of GHG in our everyday lifes, we can change them towards more environmentally friendly actions, and thanks to the information shared by the International Energy Agency (IEA), I would like to tell you three steps to take a digital detox that will minimize your carbon footprint.
Cleaning: delete emails and online files that you no longer need. This action frees up space on the servers. And the social media accounts that you no longer use. The simple fact of existing and occupying space on the internet generates an environmental impact.
Unsubscribe from the newsletters you are not reading: whilst the carbon footprint of an email is not huge, cutting down on the number of unnecesary emails you receive is one important way to reduce the CO2 eq emitted by these emails. And in a matter of emissions, each email counts.
Choose carefully what videos you would like to play, maybe a pocast would be better.
Applying the equity principle to the environment, each person in the world has the right to us the same amount of environmental space, so if we commit ourselves to use efficiently our resources with minimal environmental impacts, the whole society will benefit.
Touché.
Because this implies that the responsability is shared by everyone. That is to say, it is not only from Jeff Bezos.
The technological offer at CARTIF is varied, we are not dedicated to space tourism but we do evaluate the sustainability and calculate environmental footprints.
Therefore waiting for Jeff Bezos call impatiently!!
During the confinement, we have witnessed how nature quickly returned to the cities in our absence. Wild flora took over the corner of our cities, growing in every available crevice and gradually recovering lost space. It became visible that the streets also belong to the vegetation, but as it is thought, the city prevents their development. At what point did nature begin to disappear from urban environment? Is it possible that they live together? And, if we want vegetation to return to cities for good and to be able to enjoy it, what measure can be taken?
The relationship between nature and city has not always been as we know it today. Before the development of the modern city, vegetation was included in many spaces (tree-lined paths, spurs, avenues…) forming part of the urban landscape. Some of these spaces still survive and we can enjoy them. But this coexistence begins to disappear with the development of the current city (mid 20th century). Due to the growing demand for spaces for cars, roads, parking lots, buildings… the city has been deforesting and relegating green spaces and trees to the background, limiting its growth to specific and insolated areas, and in many cases disappearing completely. Taking te city of Valladolid as an example, we can find multiple cases where trees and gardens disappeared during this time. The Plaza Mayor, San Benito, Plaza Zorrilla, San Pablo,,, at present they are hard, waterproof squares without a trace of the vegetatiom that until not so long ago they had.
With this new urbanism, not only were many green spaces lost, but also the social and environmental benefits they provide, reducing the quality and comfort of urban spaces. Green areas are areas for leisure, games, sports and spaces for contact with nature, but they also improve the well-being and comfort of citizens by reducing high temperatures and improving air quality by capturing environmental pollution. Currently, the presence of vegetation in cities is especially important to help cities adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects, since they act as carbon sinks and improve rainwater management, among other benefits.
For this reason, in recent years it has become very important to reserve the current city model and implement new urban development policies aimed at re-naturalizing and recovering the traditions of nature in the city.
Cities are beginning to take measures in this regard and there are already actions that reintroduce new urban green spaces to take advantages of their benefits. Returning to the example of Valladolid, a representative case is that of Plaza España. This, like many other squares, lost its trees for the construction of an underground car park, on which there is currently a market.
Evolution of Plaza España in images
Thanks to old photographs, it can be seen that previously the square was a green area, with two rows of trees, offering a shady and pleasant space. It is with the construction of the underground parking (1995) when the vegetation on the surface disappears. Until now, the square had remained a hard space, with hardly any trace of the vegetation of yesteryear and it was not until last year (2020) when the square was recovered as a green space of the city. These actions are within the URBAN GreenUP project, coordinated by CARTIF (www.urbangreenup.eu), whose objective is the application of Urban Re-naturalization plans, in Valladolid and in two other European cities: Liverpool (United Kingdom) and Izmir (Turkey). In this case, it is a green roof over the canopy, which allows the current market and parking uses to be maintained. Returning the vegetation to the square not only has an aesthetic impact, it also affects the comfort and well-being of the space, also providing other benefits such as better management of rainwater and the creation of a new space to promote urban biodiversity.
The combination of new forms of vegetation together with the traditional ones, has allowed nature to return to this point of the city… from where it should never have left. We hope that many squares will follow this example and recover the lost green spaces!
Mining activity has defined civilization since its inception and in approximately 90% of our daily activities we use chemical and mineral elements extracted from the interior of the earth.
Currently, mining contributes to sustainable processes, such as the European Green Deal, which try to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, ensuring the supply of raw materials, particularly critical or fundamental raw materials. Critical raw materials are those that are economically and strategically important for Europe, but with a high supply risk.
The EU list for 2020 contains thirty critical raw materials, used in electronics, health, steel, aviation, etc., and some of them are increasingly present in renewable energy. An example of this is the addition to this list of lithium, used in batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, and bauxite, the main source of aluminum, which with steel and copper represents approximately 90% of the total weight of a wind turbine . The permanent magnets in the generators of these same turbines also contain other critical raw materials such as some rare earths, cobalt and boron.
In photovoltaic solar energy, more than 90% of the solar cells installed in the panels are made of silicon, in addition to containing other critical raw materials such as indium, gallium and germanium.
At the same time, the mining activity is implementing sustainable measures as new techniques in restoring the impacts generated and the use of remote sensing to monitor environmental behavior. Another measure is the reprocessing of waste, for example iron, zinc and platinum, turning these into secondary raw materials, moving towards a circular economy that will increase jobs in the EU by 2030.
More and more, electric and hybrid mining machinery is being used with autonomous and geolocation systems, saving costs and fuels, and various projects are being launched where there are wind and solar photovoltaic energy installations for self-consumption in mining operations.
Another mechanism that contributes to the European Green Pact is the Just Transition with the diversification of activities in regions with high dependence on coal, where there are sources of raw materials used in renewable energy.
Finally, in achieving the zero-emission target in the EU, the environmental and social risks posed by strategic agreements to guarantee the supply of critical raw materials with some countries outside the EU will be taken into account.
As a conclusion, the mining sector is important for the decarbonisation of Europe and the use of renewable and clean energy by integrating these into its own mining operations.
In our daily life, we are surrounded by radioactivity, from natural or artificial origin. Most of the radioactivity in the environment results from natural elements. In fact, there are radioactive elements in many foods and drinking water. But… How do these elements reach drinking water?
The radionuclides or radioactive isotopes are naturally present in the rocks of the earth’s crust, being the uranium mines a good example of this phenomenon. The content of these natural radionuclides varies between different rocks and soil types, with granite formations being one of the ones with the highest radionuclide content. When groundwater is in contact with these subsoils, it progressively degrades the rocks, dissolving and dragging radionuclides that can be integrated in his chemical composition in concentrations that exceed the standards required by Council Directive 2013/51/Euratom of 22 October 2013. The radionuclides that may be present in drinking water are mainly radon (222Rn), uranium (238U, 234U) and radium (226Ra), among others.
In Spain, the control of radioactive substances in water for human consumption is established according to Royal Decree 140/2003, which indicates the radioactivity parameters to be measured and the maximum values allowed. This RD quotes “all the data generated from the controls of radioactive substances in drinking water or water for the water production for human consumption must be notified in the National Information System on Drinking Water (SINAC)”.
But, do citizens really have access to information about the radiological quality of drinking water? During the development of one of the transversal activities of the LIFE ALCHEMIA project, it has been concluded that, really, the answer varies greatly depending on the country. This European project, co-financed by the LIFE Programme of the European Union, aims to demonstrate the feasibility of environmentally sustainable systems based on oxidations with manganese dioxide and bed filters to removal/reduce the natural radioactivity in water, and minimize the generation of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in the purification stages.
The LIFE ALCHEMIA project is developing databases that show the levels of natural radioactivity in treated water in drinking water treatment plants throughout the European Union, and it has been observed that in countries such as France or Estonia, citizens have free access to this information, while in countries like Finland or Sweden this information is not public or is not easily accessible. Spain is within this second group. In fact, looking at the SINAC (National Information System on Drinking Water), it is verified that the information on the radiological quality of water, is not accessible to the citizen.
Therefore, hundreds of water managers and City Councils have been contacted to request information, but only a few have responded to this request. This situation is more worrying when the high levels of uranium and thorium present in the subsoil of provinces such as Almería (province where LIFE ALCHEMIA is operating three pilot plants), Pontevedra, Ourense, Salamanca, Cáceres or Badajoz are verified.
This lack of transparency may be due to the fact that the concept of radioactivity does not have a good reputation due to the different catastrophes associated with it, so it is thought that radioactivity is indicative of “death”, even though these catastrophes have no relation to natural radioactivity.
As a final reflexion, three questions:
Did I know that water from my tap may contain natural radioactivity?
Do I know the radiological characteristics of water I drink daily?
And if I want to know them, do I know where I have to go and can I really get that data?
If you try to answer these three questions, you can draw your own conclusions about how this environmental problem is addressed in your locality.
