The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Urban Alliance and the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) are glad to launch the Making Nature’s City Toolkit, a jointly developed interactive platform that guides cities through a science-based approach to support urban biodiversity. Based on SFEI’s 2019 report Making Nature’s City, the Toolkit is intended to make the report’s core urban biodiversity framework more accessible to actors and decision-makers in cities across the world, including policymakers, planners, designers, and natural resource managers.
The IUCN Urban Team will present the Toolkit at CBD COP15 in Montreal, Canada. Those interested in learning more about it are welcome at the Nature Positive Pavilion on Friday, 9 December 2022 – 14:00 EST, for the session Urban-Nature-Based Solutions: Cities as drivers of Nature-positive development, held by IUCN. Further information is available here.
The three main components of the Toolkit are:
- Elements and actions – The framework identifies seven elements that work together to maximize biodiversity, which residents, organizations, and city agencies can take to support urban nature.
- Precedents – Precedents offer a high-level view of what other cities are doing to support urban ecosystems. By sharing case studies from around the world, the Toolkit demonstrates how scientific concepts and local expertise can be applied to support nature in your city.
- Overview of important analyses and datasets – As a city or community considers supporting urban ecosystems, a fundamental first step is to conduct spatial analyses for each of the seven elements. The resulting insights can guide the development of a strategic plan to support urban biodiversity. The Toolkit compiles a robust list of analyses, datasets, and databases that you can use to identify urban biodiversity opportunities and strategies.
The Making Nature’s City Toolkit was made possible by generous support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin; IUCN Urban Alliance; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Water Quality Improvement Fund; and Google Ecology Program.