From pollinating insects to technology: how 3Bee is revolutionizing biodiversity protection through innovation

How can biodiversity protection be revolutionized through innovation?

In this interview, Virginia Castellucci – Head of Sustainability & Advocacy at 3Bee | XNatura, Enactus Alumna, and recognized leader in the world of sustainability – tells us how a naturetech company capable of generating real impact is born and developed.

Virginia Castellucci, Head of Advocacy and Sustainability di 3Bee | XNatura

Virginia, many people within the Enactus community know you for your commitment to biodiversity: we often and gladly see you on the front lines. In fact, your work reflects a fight, in terms of impact, on one of the hottest issues for the future of our Planet. Tell us who you are and what led you to do what you do today.

My name is Virginia Castellucci and I am Head of Sustainability & Advocacy at 3Bee | XNatura. After graduating from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and gaining experience in consulting, I founded an accelerator for green-tech solutions. Today, I work to make biodiversity a strategic, measurable, and regenerative value, thanks to satellite technologies, IoT, and field projects. I believe in the power of communities: from Enactus I learned how much impact well-guided ideas can generate.

3Bee is an example for all Enactus projects: it represents an organization born to generate impact and carries on its core mission with a successful and constantly evolving business model. So, can you tell us what 3Bee is today?

Today, 3Bee is a company that regenerates biodiversity by combining technology and environmental impact. Our mission is to protect and monitor ecosystems using advanced solutions like Spectrum, a bioacoustic IoT sensor that continuously and non-invasively monitors pollinators such as wild bees and hoverflies; Polly X, designed to detect environmental parameters related to air quality; Birdy, a bioacoustic device that detects bird populations by analyzing sound frequencies to provide transparent and quantitative data; Hive-Tech, a sensor that, when applied to a beehive, allows precise observation of bee health, in addition to monitoring environmental parameters useful for analyzing surrounding biodiversity; camera traps, based on IoT technology, that monitor the passage of medium and large wildlife. There’s the Biodiversa app, a free gamified app for monitoring biodiversity and protecting ecosystems, which allows you to “collect” and easily identify the plants and flowers you come across during a walk outdoors. A fun way to engage people and make them active players in protecting biodiversity.

With XNatura’s environmental monitoring platform, we provide geospatial data and analysis to regenerate natural environments, working with companies, institutions, and nature parks. With these tools, we create concrete actions to improve ecosystem health, making the protection of natural capital a shared and measurable commitment.

“Nature tech” is a concept that is still new and seemingly oxymoronic to many, but 3Bee demonstrates how necessary this combination is. What does this concept mean to you?

For 3Bee, “nature tech” is the fusion of innovation and sustainability, where technology serves to protect and regenerate nature. It’s not an oxymoronic concept, but a necessity: today, monitoring biodiversity and intervening in a targeted way requires advanced scientific solutions. Our technologies allow us to collect real-time data, monitor the environment, and act effectively. Innovation that is useful for biodiversity is the kind that makes it possible to measure, understand, and improve ecosystems, creating concrete and measurable impacts for the future.

How can technology measure the value of nature? And how important is environmental impact measurement today for companies and institutions?

Today, we collaborate with over 500 companies on activities related both to biodiversity monitoring and regeneration. Our clients are extremely diverse, mainly in the private sector, but we also include collaborations with public entities such as municipalities and nature parks. Our verticals are as follows:

• Energy: we accelerate the approval process when biodiversity monitoring is integrated into the design of solar or wind plants.

• Infrastructure: being a sector that strongly impacts habitat fragmentation, we are working to make monitoring more scalable and cost-effective, facilitating reporting to the authorities.

• Agri-food supply chain: there is a clear dependence between this sector and ecosystem services; companies in the sector use our platform to validate the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices and to monitor complex and geographically dispersed supply chains.

• Real Estate: we collaborate with the sector to calculate the biodiversity net gain in urban regeneration projects and to compare different projects.

The next steps for 3Bee: what will they be focused on?

Our goal is to become a global platform focused on monitoring and protecting the natural world. It’s an ambitious vision, but we’ve already achieved many milestones: today we monitor one million hectares worldwide, and we aim to increase that impact tenfold. The same goes for our monitoring devices: we currently have over 5,000 active globally, and we’d like to reach 100,000. In the short term, one of our main focuses is expanding the number of Biodiversity Oases. In this direction, we’ve just launched the XNatura Regeneration Awards: a contest open to ideas and proposals for the creation of new Oases around the world. It’s a medium-term objective: today we have many Oases in Italy and Europe, but we want to expand beyond that.

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Learn more about Virginia Castellucci 👇

Graduated in Innovation Management at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, she began her career in consulting and then launched Step Tech Park, an accelerator for green-tech solutions and open innovation projects with companies such as FENDI, Roche, and Fater.

Virginia is currently Head of Sustainability & Advocacy at 3Bee – XNatura.

She is an expert in European environmental policies, leads national technical working groups, and is part of the community called The Sustainability Circle, an exclusive network for sustainability leaders to improve their leadership impact together. She is also the voice of the “Podcast Biodiverso,” which explores biodiversity through a scientific lens, and a speaker at events like the Point Zero Forum in Zurich, the Green&Blue Festival, and many others.

She gave a TED Talk, which you can find here: TED Talk – Virginia Castellucci

In Enactus, Virginia was among the very first students to join the Italian network, with the Enactus Trento team, and is now an Advisory Board Member and mentor to hundreds of young changemakers.