New PBL policy brief calls for prominent positioning of cities within the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.
– Amelie Claessens, IUCN
Realising the Urban Opportunity
Later this year, at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), world leaders will meet in Kunming, China, to decide on the course of biodiversity action for the next decade i.e. the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The stakes are high. With biodiversity collapsing and climate change worsening, a cascade of tipping points loom. Humanity now stands at a crossroads. To secure a sustainable resilient future in which people and nature prosper, society must transform at a speed and scale virtually unprecedented in human history.
In order to transition from business-as-usual to a future characterised by mutually enhancing human-Earth relations (i.e. the Ecozoic Era), we must address the wealth of ecological opportunities that cities have to offer, not just the threats that they pose. In this vein, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) has published the policy brief, Realising the Urban Opportunity: Cities and the Post-2020 Biodiversity Governance. The authors, Harriet Bulkeley (Durham University and Utrecht University), Marcel Kok (PBL), and Linjun Xie (Durham University), describe and stress the opportunity to embed urban perspectives, actions and ambitions within the post-2020 GBF. They chart pathways to unlocking cities’ potential to conserve, restore and thrive with nature. They call for a rethink on biodiversity governance.
Urban development and urban life are crucial in determining the nature and extent of biodiversity loss as well as shaping how the majority of the world’s population lives with nature.
From threat to opportunity to transformative action
Urbanisation and its implications for production and consumption patterns are considered to be major direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. Addressing these drivers is necessary for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, the policy brief also emphasizes that cities can contribute in more ways than merely controlling urbanization. Urban communities will be able to thrive in liveable, sustainable and resilient cities by restoring the ecological foundations upon which the city is built and conserving biodiversity within the urban matrix. Nature’s contributions—including freshwater provision, air purification, flood control and heat mitigation—can greatly enhance the health and wellbeing of city dwellers. In that sense, the policy brief warns that the current role the CBD envisages for cities may be too constrained.
Rather than regarding cities either simply as implementing national policies or as deploying a limited capacity to regulate and control land-use change, transformative biodiversity governance will require that we fully harness the potential for urban action.
Three, currently underdeveloped, aspects of transformative urban action that are required to reach the goals of the post-2020 GBF are discussed in the policy brief and highlight the importance of procurement, investment and experimentation. By recognising cities as critical governance arenas where the mainstreaming of biodiversity action can find traction among municipal authorities, urban stakeholders and local communities, the value of nature and its contribution to people can become more widely recognized.
Moving forward will require shifting the dial away from seeing cities primarily as a threat to biodiversity to recognising that they offer significant opportunities for action.
Parties negotiating the post-2020 GBF have the profound opportunity to make good on the promise of an ecological civilisation. They would be well advised to give cities a prominent role within the Global Biodiversity Framework – one that recognises their immense potential and shared to address biodiversity loss whilst enhance nature’s contributions to people. The PBL policy brief makes a compelling case for empowering cities, harnessing their capacities and letting them lead.
References
Bulkeley H., Kok M. and Xie L. (2021). Realising the Urban Opportunity: Cities and Post-2020 Biodiversity Governance. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague.