The Cities and Biodiversity Outlook: 10 main messages
- Categories
Reports
- Published
19th Jul, 2019
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- It is for urban areas to remedy their own negative effects on the natural environment through development and implementation of adequate solutions.
- With proper planning and management, cities can retain substantial components of native biodiversity.
- Quantifying the value of ecosystems and/ or attaching qualitative values enables mainstreaming of ecological factors into city management.
- Proper planning and resources can result in mutual benefits for human and environmental healthiness.
- Urban green spaces can contribute to climate-change mitigation.
- Existing food systems and associated ecosystems can be maintained if their degree of biodiversity is increased, improving global food security in the process.
- Urban and environmental planning provides opportunities and formal legal mechanisms for biodiversity conservation through design guidelines, building codes, zoning schemes, spatial plans and strategic choices, all coupled with effective enforcement.
- Cities have an essential role to play in environmental governance focusing on both the urban landscape and the remote ecosystems that are affected by urbanisation.
- Cities test our capacity to live together and to create environments that are socially just, ecologically sustainable, economically productive, politically participatory and culturally vibrant.
- Fostering creativity, innovation and learning is essential if the global challenge of preserving biodiversity in the face of unprecedented urbanization is to be met.
Source: Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2012