Cities and Bees : notes from WUF13 in Baku

Pollinators were not officially on the agenda in Baku. Yet during a conversation with Laura Puttkamer, who works in solutions journalism, pollinators surfaced almost inevitably — as discussions about cities increasingly tend to do once they move beyond infrastructure and toward the quieter question of coexistence.

Outside the conference halls in Baku, the air smelled faintly of sea salt. Delegates moved between panels on transport corridors, climate adaptation and urban resilience beneath enormous LED renderings of future cities.

Bees were not part of the official programme.

Yet during a conversation with Laura Puttkamer, who works in solutions journalism, pollinators surfaced almost inevitably — as discussions about cities increasingly tend to do once they move beyond infrastructure and toward the quieter question of coexistence.

Not only honey bees, now fashionable additions to hotel rooftops and corporate sustainability campaigns, but solitary pollinators: the largely invisible insects upon which much of the world’s biodiversity quietly depends.

At first glance, the subject seemed oddly small for a global urban forum.

It was anything but.

According to the FAO, more than 75 per cent of global food crops depend at least partly on pollinators. Nearly 40 per cent of insect pollinator species are threatened with extinction because of habitat loss, pesticides and climate change. Economically, pollination contributes between $235 billion and $577 billion annually to global agriculture.

But statistics alone rarely move people.

Laura Puttkamer observed that environmental journalism has become trapped in catastrophe narratives. Audiences absorb endless statistics about collapse while remaining uncertain about what meaningful adaptation actually looks like in practice.

Around WUF13, the tone often felt different from the usual climate vocabulary of either techno-optimism or despair. More conversations focused on responses that people could physically see and participate in.

Pollinators fit that framework surprisingly well.

Wildflower corridors beside tram lines. Rooftop gardens transformed into habitats. Reduced pesticide use in municipal parks. Sustainability stops feeling abstract once it becomes visible in everyday life.

The conversation recalled Bee Camino, an initiative devoted to solitary pollinators, sustainability and environmental education along the Camino de Santiago.

Walking those ancient routes through villages, forests and farmland revealed how differently people respond to lived experience than to institutional language. A child planting flowers for pollinators understands biodiversity more instinctively than someone reading a sustainability framework. A farmer abandoning pesticide-heavy agriculture communicates resilience more clearly than most conference panels.

Stories travel where statistics cannot.

Data may measure progress. It rarely inspires it.

Reports and frameworks matter enormously. Policymakers rely on metrics, donors demand indicators and institutions function through dashboards glowing reassuringly inside conference halls.

Yet very little of it reaches the human heart.

A teacher explaining to students why clean water matters. A child studying beneath solar-powered lights for the first time. A farmer watching pollinators return to fields once silenced by chemicals.

These moments communicate sustainability far more effectively than institutional language.

Long before climate reports and development frameworks existed, societies passed down knowledge through stories — around fires, across generations, through memory and ritual. Sustainability, despite all its modern vocabulary, still depends on the same human instinct: people protect what they feel connected to.

Perhaps that explains why pollinators matter.

They perform invisible labour upon which entire ecosystems quietly depend. More than 20,000 bee species exist worldwide, most of them solitary rather than social. Many produce no honey. Many barely sting. Most people never notice them at all.

And yet without them, ecosystems begin to unravel.

In Baku, the conversation about pollinators felt less imported than one might expect. Across the Caucasus, beekeeping has shaped rural life for centuries. In mountain regions of Azerbaijan, traditional wooden hives still appear along forest edges, and bee symbolism has been found in archaeological sites dating back thousands of years.

Long before pollinators entered the language of global sustainability policy, communities here already understood their importance through harvests, seasons and survival itself.

For decades urban planning prioritised efficiency, sanitation and visual order. Lawns were cut into ecological emptiness. Wild vegetation disappeared beneath concrete and ornamental landscaping. Green spaces were designed largely for aesthetics rather than ecosystems. Meanwhile industrial agriculture beyond city limits became increasingly dependent on pesticides and monoculture farming.

The result has been widespread habitat collapse for insects.

Paradoxically, some cities are now becoming safer for pollinators than the countryside surrounding them.

Paris has phased out synthetic pesticides in public parks. Amsterdam has invested in “bee corridors” linking fragmented habitats across the city. Municipal authorities in parts of Switzerland and Liechtenstein are experimenting with biodiversity-centred planning once considered marginal to urban policy.

During Bee Camino, the changes became visible surprisingly quickly. Rooftop gardens in Monaco vibrated with insects above dense apartment blocks. Wildflowers planted beside pedestrian routes transformed sterile spaces into functioning habitats within a single season.

The irony is difficult to miss: some of the smallest urban interventions now produce some of the most visible environmental results.

Wildflower corridors are cheaper than large-scale climate infrastructure, easier to communicate politically and immediately understood by residents. They allow cities to present sustainability not as sacrifice, but as improvement in everyday urban life.

There are, naturally, limits to the current enthusiasm. Ecologists increasingly warn that fashionable rooftop honeybee projects may sometimes harm wild pollinators through competition.

Nature, unfortunately, is unimpressed by marketing.

Still, cities are beginning to understand something they long ignored: biodiversity is not an optional luxury attached to urban prosperity. It is one of the conditions that makes prosperity possible. A city incapable of sustaining insect life is unlikely to prove particularly resilient for humans either.

And perhaps that was the most valuable insight to emerge from a forum focused on cities. Sustainable urban futures are not merely collections of smart technologies, climate targets and futuristic architecture. They are living ecosystems.

And the future of cities may depend less on how high they build than on whether anything still lives between the concrete.