Are you interested in cooperating with other cities on protection of urban biodiversity?

Supporting UBC cities in becoming Biodiverse Cities is one of the key goals in the UBC Sustainability Action Programme 2030. There is an urgent need for cities to take action to mitigate biodiversity loss and adapt to the changing climate.

We would like to invite all interested cities to share experiences and discuss what actions have been already taken and what still needs to be done to strengthen biodiversity in urban areas. The aim is to jointly map bottlenecks, identify solutions, and discuss development of possible cooperation projects around this topic. The meeting will be organised online on 24 August 2022 at 12:00–14:30 CEST / 13:00–15:30 EEST.

The meeting is a continuation for the working group discussions that were organized in 2021 to co-develop the UBC Sustainability Action Programme. Following the discussions in the thematic groups, three key issues were recognized:

• Cities should actively increase and strengthen biodiversity in urban areas, e.g. planning ecosystem services, implementing compensation mechanisms, ensuring diversity of protected areas as well as high quality of green areas, adequate level of maintenance.

• Necessary political commitment, resources, and level of knowledge on the issue of biodiversity should be assured and its linkages to other high prominence topics such as climate change, wellbeing, air quality, eco-tourism should be recognised.

• Importance of strategic communication on the topic of biodiversity and related measures taken up by the local authorities should be acknowledged in order to raise awareness of the issue and thus influence higher levels of political and administrative commitment, allocated and prioritized funding, as well as public interest and acceptance.

To prepare the meeting, we would like to invite you to fill a small survey on what actions have already been taken in this field.

The meeting is aimed at all experts working with protection of biodiversity in UBC cities. Register and invite your colleagues!