Biodiversity corridors and restorative justice: How bee-friendly infrastructure can make Wales a sanctuary for humanity
The word anthology comes from the Greek word Anthologia, meaning a collection, or a bouquet, of flowers.
This etymology echoes the activities of our pollinators, especially our honeybees, whose daily activities to pollinate flowers feed into our staple foods and our bouquets alike. Bees are essential to human activity and life.
But the by-products of the successive industrial revolutions have polluted our soils and rivers, both integral to the health of our plants and our pollinators and therefore our communities’ wellbeing.
I’ve been fascinated by the natural world from my earliest memories. In my late teens, I began volunteering at the local City Farm on Sloper Road in Cardiff. Unfortunately, the farm was closed down to make room for the current football stadium. I then went into gardening by working on allotments. In 2017, I purchased my first beehives and since then I’ve been on a quest to relearn humanity’s forgotten language. I’m fascinated by the different fauna, floral and fungi species that bees use to produce their food or their Royal jelly and bee glue.
Through beekeeping, I became a graduated Sankofa citizen — the equivalent of a citizen scientist. Sankofa is a West African concept that teaches the 3 Rs: Retrieval, Repair and Restoration. It complements the Eastern African NUZO SABA principles, in particular Ujima (‘collective responsibility’), Ujamaa (‘cooperative economics’) and Kuumba (‘sustainable creativity’).
The Industrial Revolutions of yesteryears have had a lasting, detrimental impact on our habitats and resulted in the narrowing of our biodiversity corridors, which are integral to our pollinators’ wellbeing and, therefore, ourselves.
The first industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century saw Wales at the forefront of this process. As Cardiff became the biggest coal port in the world, the Coal and Shipping Exchange building was constructed between 1884 and 1888 by Edwin Seward as a base from which to conduct trade negotiations regarding the coal mines of the South Wales Valleys – the product of which was shipped to Cardiff for distribution. It was at the Coal Exchange that the first ever £1,000,000 deal was agreed in 1904.
Before the Coal Exchange was built in Mount Stuart Square, the area was a residential square with a central garden. It was taken over by commerce as the city grew in prosperity.
The residue of coal dust left behind by these developments has led to the stagnation of many fields and streams. But the solutions to this are already present in nature: for example, bioremediation teaches us that oyster mushrooms can be used to reduce the fossil fuel footprint and help restore the fertility of the soil.
The Philosophy of Ecological Justice
The well-being of our biodiversity has a profound impact upon our planet’s, and therefore our communities’, wellbeing.
Ecological justice draws on the principles of restorative justice and to us is inseparable from social justice and equity.
For us, it is important that our restorative justice begins with those directly impacted by it (pollinators and low-income communities) and also with those industries or commercial sectors that have benefited most from the actions of yesteryears.
We can look to healthy beehives for examples of this process. As illustrated by beehives, a healthy ecosystem teaches us that there is no waste of resources.
To us, restorative justice therefore would mean that the same building that has been used to drive the industrial revolution should now be repurposed to reverse this process, as an ecological enterprise incubator, or a centre for environmental groups to network.
We need to retrieve the ecological literacy that allowed humans to live in harmony with nature’s laws. Inspired by the bees, we must also increase the cities’ biodiversity corridors, and increase our capacity for the cultivation of diversified, seasonal crops and their circulation across the food chain, increasing the amount of fresh, locally grown produce available for trade. We must set up effective systems of food waste management.
We also need to start deepening our ecological literacy to help ensure that we develop systems that are ecologically friendly and therefore provide the best chances for resilient future generations.
This also means seeking partnerships within the industrial and commercial sectors so that we can achieve our objectives in broadening our biodiversity and bee corridors via rooftop networks and sufficient space for storage and processing of bees’ products.
For this to happen, we also need to start deepening our ecological literacy to help ensure that we develop systems that are ecologically friendly and therefore provide the best chances for resilient future generations.
We must broaden biodiversity corridors within our local communities to increase the amounts of available nectar, pollen and resin for our local pollinators. This can be achieved by increasing the amount of pollinator friendly plants, shrubs and trees, and reducing the mowing of private and public fields & parks especially in the spring period. Increasing the amount of safe corridors for our hedgehogs.
This will also increase the amount of seasonal crops that we can harvest for our communities’ weekly and monthly needs which, in turn, will help increase our overall understanding of what our food and honeybee supply chain needs to be resilient for future generations.
We must start now, by setting up a safe space for engagement with all things apicultural as part of the broader corridors and healthy communities project.
This will help us better understand the well-being of our pollinators, our environment, and our personal and collective well-being.
