The Green City Accord was launched on 22 October 2020 during the European Week of Regions and Cities. The Green Accord is a movement by European mayors, open to any city located in the European Union, which aims to improve European cities by making them cleaner and healthier. Several EU funding programmes and financing instruments are available to support cities in developing and implementing environmental actions under the Accord. By signing and approving the Accord, cities commit to addressing five goals by 2030 dealing with air quality, water quality and use, urban biodiversity, the circular economy and noise pollution.

Public development banks will be critical to global efforts to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout. To realize their potential, they should complement their climate investments by setting explicit nature-based goals and targets. Find out what Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility have to say about this important issue.

The Cities of Guadalajara (Mexico), Montreal (Canada), and San Antonio (USA), join forces for global biodiversity with the launch of a North America Friendship Garden. Learn more about this initiative below.

New Sustainable Drainage System (SUDs) enabled park opened in Manchester, part of H2020 funded GrowGreen project, which aims to demonstrate how green infrastructure and nature-based solutions will produce climate resilience, environmental, social, and health and wellbeing outcomes and benefits.

On 19 August 2020, the City of Cape Town released a draft Climate Change Strategy which made various commitments to achieving the international goals set to limit global warming which is also in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. The strategy outlines strategic focus areas and 35 goals, which differ greatly in their level of determination and commitment. It also touches on the often underestimated economic constraints world-wide, which mitigation policies will impose on big CO2 polluters like South Africa in the near future. A final Strategy and a Climate Action Plan is expected to be published next year.

Resource mobilisation, access to finance and increased investment in nature-based solutions are key issues in the negotiations towards the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. The conversation on finance for nature within an African context featured prominently at ICLEI Africa’s Local Climate Solutions for Africa 2020 virtual congress that was held from 3-12 November 2020. An impressive line-up of speakers, including Dr. Rene Castro-Salazar, Assistant Director-General, FAO, and Mr. Amjad Abbashar, Chief, UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Regional Office for Africa, participated in the finance for nature sessions.

Daring Cities 2020, hosted by ICLEI and the City of Bonn from 7-28 October 2020, offered an exciting array of high level and visionary sessions, a series of informative workshops, resources like an email bootcamp and podcast series, and personal networking opportunities. The event helped to set the course to COP26, Daring Cities 2021 and beyond and included several nature focused sessions, including one on financing greener cities for the future, another on the nature-climate-health nexus and a high level event daring cities to sign up to the Edinburgh Declaration.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have gained increasing traction to address climate challenges and the UN Climate Summit of 2019 focused political attention on the power of NBS for climate and sustainable development. However, it is important to understand the NBS are “not solitary heroes that can save the world alone”. For NBS to be effective, mitigation actions are also needed, and “scientific care must be taken to avoid NBS becoming means for greenwashing.”

On 29 October 2020, The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released this report which addresses the links between the degradation of nature and increasing pandemic risks, quantifying the economic costs of pandemics as well as the costs of preventing future pandemics, and offers evidence-informed policy options for governments and decision-makers to escape the era of pandemics.