• Belo Horizonte, Brazil •

13-14 June 2012

Ecosystem Services, food security, urban nature and biodiversity – how do we make it happen?

The overarching message from this Urban Nature Forum was that biodiversity underpins our wellbeing, security, and resilience. Cities offer enormous hope: through social organization, resource mobilization, communication, education, efficiency gains, innovation and leadership.

The 3rd Urban Nature Forum, held immediately prior to the ICLEI World Congress in 2012, provided an innovative science-policy-implementation interface on urban biodiversity and ecosystem management. The event brought together a unique mixture of mayors, local level councillors, FutureCityLeaders, policy-makers, scientists, town planners, conservationists and other stakeholders from 22 countries and 39 cities around the world!

The Urban Nature Forum 2012 lived up to its reputation, giving rise to fruitful discussion, interaction and the launching of exciting tools and initiatives. Topics included ecological economics, policy, research advances, LBSAPs, the Singapore Index, food security, city case studies and more.

Highlights:

  • Over 30 organizations and local governments joined the newly launched Urban Biosphere (URBIS) Initiative – an open network fostering knowledge exchange through URBIS Dialogues to transcend the science-policy interface and to contribute to the achievement of the CBD Aichi Targets.
  • Announcement by the Commissioner of Hyderabad in India, Babu M.T. Krishna, whose city will play host to the next CBD Conference of the Parties, that a City and Subnational Biodiversity Summit will also take place in parallel to the COP from 15-16 October 2012.

Noteworthy speakers:

  • Marcio Araujo Lacerda – Mayor of City of Belo Horizonte
  • Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias – Executive Secretary, Secretariat of Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
  • Babu M.T. Krishna, Commissioner of Hyderabad
  • Thomas Elmqvist – Stockholm Resilience Center

See other Urban Nature events here:

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