Whenever the term "biodiversity" is mentioned, the word "loss" inevitably follows, as decades of intense human development, habitat loss, and environmental degradation have placed Earth’s biodiversity under severe threat. Even though over 43% of all key biodiversity areas have a protected areas status, the past decade marked a skyrocketing number of endangered species, with over 44.000 species at risk in 2023.
Protected areas undoubtedly play a crucial role in preserving biodiversity and slowing its loss. However, it’s becoming clear that relying solely on these "biodiversity pockets" is not enough. We need to rethink what biodiversity is, where it exists, and how it functions.
Biodiversity isn’t neatly confined to designated areas of our own choosing, but rather exists all around us – even in our concrete-covered, polluted, and overcrowded cities. It exists not only in botanical gardens and parks but also on our streets, in our buildings, and even within our homes. To truly address this, we need innovative solutions that recognize the value of urban biodiversity, reinforce it, nurture it, and teach our societies how to coexist with it. This is precisely the mission of the Urban Biodiversity Parks Project.
Turku: A City with a Vision
The city of Turku, the 3rd largest urban area in Finland after Helsinki and Tampere, is located on Finland's southwest coast, at the mouth of the Aura River. With its ambitious leadership, the city aims to become a carbon-neutral, and a global leader in enhancing urban biodiversity by 2030. There is a close connection between these goals: improving biodiversity boosts carbon sinks, enhances resilience to climate change and improves the quality of life for Turku citizens.
“Turku covers 0,1% of the total area, but hosts over 12% of endangered species in Finland. This is why we need to be ambitious and ensure improved living conditions for both, our citizen and biodiversity.”
— Elina Rantanen, Deputy Mayor of Urban Environment of the City of Turku, Vice-President of the Union of the Baltic Cities.
“Skanssi, the first Biodiversity Park in Europe, represents a new kind of nature conservation, where nature is not only protected, but is actively increased,” explains the Deputy Mayor of Turku Elina Rantanen. “This is something we are all very proud of and passionate about.”
Photo: Klemen Strmšnik
To achieve the ambitious goal of becoming one of the world's leading climate and nature cities by 2030, the City of Turku has adopted several key strategic documents, including the Turku City Strategy: Turku in the 2030s, the Turku Climate Plan 2029, and Biodiversity Programme 2023–2029. Turku is also a signatory of the Green City Accord, a member of the 100 EU Mission: Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, and recently joined the global CitiesWithNature initiative, which aims to protect and enhance nature while building resilience in cities worldwide. One of the most tangible steps towards realizing these ambitions is the implementation of the Urban Biodiversity Parks Project.
About the Urban Biodiversity Parks Project
The Skanssi Biodiversity Park is located in the Skanssi district, within an old gravel pit on a sand ridge that runs through Turku. The sand ridge was extensively excavated in the 1950s and 1960s, creating a valley-like landscape. Over time, much of the exposed sandpit has naturally re-vegetated, with part of the area even transforming into a wetland.
A park plan for the Skanssi area was developed in 2016, focusing on sustainable stormwater management integrated with attractive, green recreational spaces. At that time, there were no significant plans for the area where the biodiversity park would eventually be located – those visions emerged later.
The Urban Biodiversity Parks Project promotes “Urban Biodiversity Parks” as a tool for urban ecological restoration and regeneration – piloting this novel concept on a 20-ha degraded area of an old sandpit in Skanssi. Just as importantly, the project aims to engage citizens and key stakeholders to co-create inclusive, resilient, and healthy urban neighbourhoods.
The project is composed out of 5 main activities:
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Establishing a full-scale 20 ha urban biodiversity park in the city district of Skanssi in Turku to experiment with 21 novel approaches to conserve and actively enhance urban biodiversity in urban environments. To ensure multi-purpose use and enhance park’s attraction factor for citizens, the park will be simultaneously developed as recreational area and experimental learning platform.
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Developing small-scale biodiversity pilots in pre-selected sub-urban neighbourhoods to improve understanding on effective solutions and their integration into urban planning and management mechanisms.
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Engaging local community for co-designing and improving their living environment through small-scale biodiversity pilots and recreational elements.
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Establishing a proactive dialogue with private sector actors (e.g. investors, urban planners, construction companies, etc.), improving their knowledge on the added value of urban biodiversity and tools for integration of nature-based solutions in urban development, as well as motivating them for proactive urban ecological restoration. Ecological compensation mechanism will be studied as a potential biodiversity park financing mechanism.
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Developing the biodiversity park as a participatory learning platform.
To carry out these activities, the City of Turku formed a strong partnership, bringing together three higher education and research institutions, as well as the regional public authority and local companies to collaborate on this project. Furthermore, project partners from Turku invited 3 additional cities (Malmö/Sweden, Košice/Slovakia and Neapoli-Sykies/Greece) to follow their efforts, co-develop transfer tools and develop their own transfer studies – clear push towards maximizing transfer potentials of expected results.
“Any measurable impact on biodiversity from the project would be a significant achievement. However, the real “WOW!” factor lies in our ability to learn from this project and apply the proven solutions across all our neighbourhoods.”
— Elina Rantanen, Deputy Mayor of Urban Environment of the City of Turku, Vice-President of the Union of the Baltic Cities.
Photo: Maija Rusanen
Ambitions
The common short-term goal of this innovative project is clear: to get things done and deliver on the planned activities. This cooperation sets up a learning journey, in which the flexibility and a willingness to search for solutions will be crucial in the years ahead. The desired long-term impact, however, is significantly more ambitious:
“It would be wonderful to see that in 10 years, a network of biodiversity parks has emerged across Europe, inspired by Turku's example and the work we've done here to support diverse nature!”
— Maija Rusanen, Senior Advisor at the Project Development Unit of the City of Turku.
Written by: Klemen Strmšnik, EUI Innovative Actions Expert
Longer version of the article has been originally published at: Embracing Biodiversity as an Integral Building Block of Our Cities: Unveiling the background story of the Urban Biodiversity Parks Project and understanding what it sets out to achieve | Portico
