In honour of the World Biodiversity Day, marked each year on 22 May, experts Alice Reil, Coordinator of Green Infrastructure & Biodiversity at ICLEI Europe, and Gillian Dick, Spatial Planning Manager, Research & Development, Glasgow City Council, gathered to discuss this year’s Biodiversity Day theme, ‘We’re part of the solution”. Their discussion highlights how local action is at the heart of creating a sustainable society.
Alice Reil: Thank you so much Gillian for joining me today. It is great to have a one-on-one discussion about biodiversity in cities, as the topic is close to both of our hearts.
Gillian Dick: Great to be chatting! I feel there has been this opportune moment coming over the last three or four years, with the climate emergency upon us and people starting to look at the natural world as a part of the solution to the problems created by the manmade world. I think it is best to take a holistic approach to urban biodiversity, as I know you take with many cities Alice.
Reil: Absolutely – we definitely work with the bigger picture at ICLEI. There is great potential in cities to enhance biodiversity, if we look at places as parts of this ecosystem. We need to remember biodiversity is connected to everything, even daily things such as the food we eat. If we manage to connect the dots between biodiversity and society, we can influence local governments to tackle biodiversity loss sooner than later.
Dick: In Glasgow, we are trying to do just that. Let us take tree planting for example: we have woodlands around the city, individual trees, and trees in parks all capturing carbon. However, this is not enough if the goal is to have everyone within walking distance from trees. In order to bridge that gap, when a new development is planned, developers must take into account whether the particular place needs trees or, say, green walls, for shade, cooling or insulation. Alternatively, they could decide to plant apple trees, if there is need for communal activities in the area, such as urban gardening. When planning, we do not actually talk about biodiversity, but rather its concrete benefits, like a great view, landscape, places to play and relax, and economic opportunities, to help get things rolling. There is a big push for these things in Glasgow at the moment, as we’re hosting the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26). Everyone wants to plant trees! But we have to take a step back and look at opportunities and challenges in spaces, and then choose a suitable approach involving local communities.
Reil: I have quite a few examples from cities ICLEI has worked with. Instead of framing biodiversity as the goal, many start with a challenge. I agree this is a more attractive way of engaging citizens, companies and other actors. It is a win-win.
Two cities I have worked with doing great holistic work in this sphere are Turin (Italy) and ICLEI Member Strasbourg (France). Turin wanted to foster pollinators and increase social cohesion. They engaged mental health patients in pollinator habitat creation and monitoring. This then grew from a little, low-cost, voluntary project to being a part of a large EU-funded project called proGIreg that revitalises post-industrial districts with nature-based solutions. In Strasbourg, as there are many green spaces not maintained by the municipality, they developed a ‘united for more diversity charter’, which individual citizens, organisations and companies can sign-up to, committing to a certain number of actions to promote biodiversity. This includes not only the ban of pesticides, but also planting local plants, perennial plants and promoting pollinator habitats, including beehives, natural meadows, orchards and so on. It has been very successful, with more than 100 organisations signing up and citizens being very supportive of the initiative.
Dick: Our Open Space Strategy aims to do just that! We also, together with ICLEI and 29 other global partners, assess impacts of nature-based solutions through the Connecting Nature project. For example, we have visualised the flight paths of bees across Glasgow. Besides being a great talking point, it allows us to assess where we should start planting certain species to encourage bees and increase pollination. We are also looking at birds, and creating designs for nesting spots. If we understand the specifics of nature in spaces, we can include these considerations into strategies – I call it ‘biodiversity by default’.
To support this work, we have signed, for instance, the Edinburgh Declaration, which ICLEI developed with the Scottish and Quebec governments and the European Committee of the Regions. It essentially lays out the biodiversity aspirations and commitments of local subnational governments, in terms of what they can contribute and want to see in a post-2020 biodiversity framework. The declaration has been a very good tool for opening up conversations with other Scottish councils, and helping initiate an expert group to discuss nature-based solutions and biodiversity.
Reil: Absolutely. If cities really start to think about multiple functions of spaces, we are on the right track. In the past, the focus has been on addressing impacts of climate change, rather than also using space for biodiversity promotion. When we talk about space, we usually mean space on the ground, but there are opportunities to go vertical with nature-based solutions such as green walls or roofs, which are often attached to prestigious projects and are not something done for regular housing. Is this something you are discussing in Glasgow?
Dick: When we talk about open space, we consider so-called green, blue and grey space. The grey includes footpaths, roads, walls and roofs. We are starting to discuss the criteria needed to turn those into green roofs and walls. Heritage buildings probably cannot accommodate this, but perhaps we could so something in the walls of courtyards or implement rain gardens in old buildings instead. With the pandemic, we have realised people need bigger shared outdoor spaces. Outdoor gardens are often included in office buildings, but can they be included in residential buildings? Can we include vertical gardening and urban farming in buildings? What turns a space into a place? What makes a nice place? Fostering a ‘nice place’ is a great chance to introduce nature-based solutions.
Reil: True, if we can imagine biodiverse and socially inclusive alternatives for existing spaces, this would help get the message across and incite implementation.
Dick: If you look at Glasgow, our affluent communities have always been good at aiming for the moon and negotiating until things get done. They feel entitled to spaces, and are able to experiment and try out nature-based solutions. Our less affluent communities are more risk-averse. We need to give them opportunities so they can aim high when consulted on what kind of open spaces they want. We need to provide education on these solutions and their impacts to all communities.
With COP26 is coming up, Glasgow City council decided to relaunch the Sustainable Glasgow initiative to actively improve quality of life throughout the city. It is a partnership between housing, communities, business, universities, enterprise and education. We need to look at the best solutions, and who will sustain them – you have to make sure that you are taking the community with you.
Reil: That is definitely something that most cities grapple with across Europe. That’s, of course, a central finding from the recent UK Government Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity, whose main message is to educate, and to account for natural capital in planning processes.
Dick: There is a neat tool that colleagues within Connecting Nature have developed to help with that. They have adapted a business model canvas that economists understand to make a nature-based solutions version.
I think it is crazy to consider how much more easily a city can build a bridge, for example, compared to natural spaces. We have been building parks for hundreds of years, but they are just seen as ‘nice to have’ rather than as infrastructure. Until this changes, we cannot start building a green economy. There needs to be real legislative change across to make this a more financially viable and sensible way forward.
We are looking at how we would develop Glasgow to become a capacity building hub for nature-based solutions, also tapping into the ICLEI movement CitiesWithNature, to connect with cities active on this front globally. All of this buzz has allowed me to have conversations with the national level in Scotland about how we can educate staff in this field and develop more holistic projects.
Reil: Learning from other cities is inspiring, and we get to witness this at ICLEI. Through UrbanByNature capacity building, we guide cities through the planning cycle of nature based solutions: what do they want to get out of it, how to plan financing, how to involve stakeholders, and how these solutions can be replicated. The idea is to use pioneering cities such as Glasgow, and share their planning framework with others for inspiration.
Indeed, as a city network, ICLEI consults local governments on their needs, and competencies and takes those up to a higher-level, because EU- and global policy negotiation processes can be complex. It is very important to ensure that local governments are heard at European- and global levels. We also support bolstering collaboration among other stakeholders active in the field through projects like NetworkNature, where we collaborate with the European Commission to help bring the European nature-based solutions community together to enhance cooperation and create synergies.
Dick: Because of the UK’s particular position at the moment, the Scottish government is trying to look to organisations like ICLEI to allow us to reconnect to Europe. It has been interesting to work with you to initiate conversations with colleagues in other European cities to connect innovative hubs. This also helps us add value to the Edinburgh Declaration – we can we use things like UrbanByNature and CitiesWithNature to address barriers or find solutions. And if the major barrier to implementing nature-based solutions to improve biodiversity is funding and lack of natural capital accounting, perhaps we can address this through the impact assessment done in these projects. I think there is huge potential in this kind collaboration to achieve lasting change.
When I think about Glasgow’s future, I want a city that values spaces between the buildings as much as it values the buildings themselves. I want a city that changes spaces into places, that allow you to live, work and play. As Jane Jacobs said, ”If you don't like a place, why would you fight for it?” I want cities that make us smile, engage us, open up new perspectives and surprise us.
Reil: I think it would be great if, at a political level, sustainability becomes the objective and everything else would be planned around that. Then, the value of biodiversity would also be clear to everyone. Sure, within the Environment Departments in cities everyone knows biodiversity is important, but not every citizen knows that. I think we need to find an inclusive narrative, which invites everyone to come on board to do his or her part. I think also seeing opportunities instead of the doom and gloom messaging of, “if we don't do something now within the next one or two years, we will have lost biodiversity forever” is crucial – we need inspiration.
Dick: As a final thought – the more collaboration, co-production and sharing we can do, the better, because even though we are all part of the problem, we are also but part of the solution, as the World Biodiversity Day 2021 theme states!
For more information on ICLEI’s work in this field, and to read more about the various projects cited above, click here.