Introducing adaptive community based biodiversity management in urban areas for improved connectivity and ecosystem health

Introduction

The urbanLIFEcircles project demonstrates a systematic approach for how to lead a biodiversity-oriented change in urban nature management. It brings together a consortium of lighthouse cities Tartu (EE), Aarhus (DK), and Riga (LV), with the aim of improving city-wide biodiversity management for restored connectivity and improved ecosystem health.

Objectives

We plan to improve the support for biodiversity in these cities through habitat restoration and increased citizen awareness. Additional support for urban biodiversity comes from the governance level, by setting up necessary strategic approaches and integrating biodiversity goals into practical procedures.

Vision

We envision a continuous interconnected wildlife habitat in each city that starts from peri-urban nature reserves and reaches throughout the cities, connected through green corridors and a network of high-nature value connectivity stepping stones. In this vision, urban citizens are seen as part of the urban ecosystem, participating in restoration activities and benefitting from ecosystem services offered by these urban LIFE circles.

Ambitious Goals

We have set ambitious objectives to achieve this by:

1. Engaging communities in cities to actively participate in conservation.
2. Assisting businesses towards developing necessary products and services supporting biodiversity in cities.
3. Establishing synergies for biodiversity-oriented governance and management.
4. Deploying science-based methods for adaptive management.

All this builds a sufficient baseline, so it is possible to:

5. Demonstrate with concrete actions and practical examples that the system change for biodiversity is possible in cities.

Best Practices

We plan to build on existing best practices in both urban biodiversity conservation and participatory urban governance. Our cities have varying challenges and different capacities in biodiversity matters, making the solutions we demonstrate applicable in most urban areas in Europe.