Though not intended, a couple of pictures shot out of curiosity revealed how the Green Wall installation – the Wall2Water – implemented in Ferla, Italy, during the NAWAMED project attracts pollinator insects and promotes local biodiversity.
The pictures were initially meant to communicate the aesthetic values of Nature-based Solutions. Nonetheless, they revealed the presence of pollinators belonging to 4 different orders: Coleoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, and Lepidoptera.
“If we set a scientific monitoring, we would identify many more species” says Prof. Marta Galloni of the University of Bologna, coordinator of the LIFE project GIE/IT/000755 LIFE 4 Pollinators who helped us in giving a name to our little friends.
“Increasing the biodiversity of the green wall in terms of the number of plant species led to increased pollinators diversity because everyone has their own preferences and their own seasonality. Diversity leads to diversity Prof. Galloni continues”.
Through this remarkable experience, we learnt that the use of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for the regeneration of urban areas brings multiple benefits regardless of the main goal of the solution, as, in NAWAMED, it is to foster the use of Non-Conventional Water Resources (NCWR). Indeed, thanks to the multi-functional role of NbS and their versatility in addressing many societal challenges in urban contexts, cities can become oases for pollinators instead of hostile environments.
It is proven that the presence of urban green areas leads to a greater diversity of pollinators than intensive agricultural areas, and a more diverse pollinator community also brings benefits to crops in the same area in a win-win approach Prof. Galloni adds
The urban green areas must be appropriately managed to maintain these functions and benefits, above all, without pesticides. To this aim, the project LIFE 4 Pollinators – Involving people to protect wild bees and other pollinators in the Mediterranean – prepared a handbook dedicated to green urban managers which incorporates information and advice on how to make the urban spaces pollinator-friendly.
On our side, the students of the Ferla school hosting the pilot will continue taking care of and closely observing the biodiversity and health of their green wall together with the local public administrators. NAWAMED is very proud to make this small contribution to showcasing the multiple benefits that the wide use of NbS could bring, using and testing various plant species in its installations, acknowledging that biodiversity calls for another biodiversity.