Session Description: Cities are the battleground of climate change and global biodiversity crisis as they are responsible for more than two-thirds of global warming emissions and are a major driver of biodiversity loss. Cities also play a pivotal role by delivering solutions for these interlinked global problems. Both United States and the European Union are committed to implement nature-based solutions to reduce cities’ outsized consumption footprints while helping mitigate climate change impacts and halt biodiversity loss. The EU has played a leading role on international climate and biodiversity action for decades and recently has also promoted key policy agendas like the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030, the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 and a proposal for a Nature Restoration Law that have set ambitious targets to protect nature, restore ecosystems, halt biodiversity loss, achieve land-based climate mitigation and improve monitoring and governance efforts. Very recently the Biden-Harris administration has announced a roadmap for nature-based solutions to fight climate change, strengthen communities, and support local economies. Consequently, there is an urgent need to move from knowledge to action. To succeed we need opportunities to elicit the exchange of international expert perspectives, knowledge and examples of best practices.
We propose to organize a dynamic special session to stimulate a multidisciplinary dialogue between practitioners, researchers from different fields and stakeholders around the theme of local multifunctional actions to make cities more sustainable and inclusive. Through this session we aim to bring together people with diverse backgrounds and expertise to share knowledge, better understand needs and brainstorm best practices to systematically integrate nature and nature-based solutions into the decision-making process. The overall goal of this special session will be to explore how local climate change and biodiversity responses are being operationalized and evaluated within a range of geographical and socio-political contexts across Europe and the US. The Objectives of this special session will be: i) share international learning and understanding from good practices how to better pursue a positive development at local level with a vision of no loss of green space by 2050; ii) discuss American and European case studies. This special session will be structured as a round table. We envision a 90-minute session where we will involve 4 or 5 selected presenters each giving a 5-minute presentation and then the floor will be opened to a discussion that we will moderate around the above-mentioned topics.
