Understanding Collaborative Governance of Biodiversity-inclusive urban planning: Methodological approach and benchmarking results for urban nature plans in 10 European cities

The Biodiversity strategy 2030 [1] has come as no surprise to put European Union on the path to recovery for the benefit of people, climate and the planet. For this purpose, the European commission advanced several mechanisms helping cities and larger urban areas unlocking funding for biodiversity; nonetheless a stronger need for an established governance framework that includes people and public participation across all levels and all sectors is needed [1]. Along these lines, this research was initiated as a way to understand the possible quality criteria against which several European cities could be evaluated while establishing their Urban Nature plans through two research questions. Stemming from multiple database collections for the cities’ sampling methodology [2] such as the green capital award, Urban Biodiversity Hub, Climate Neutral Cities Mission, the green City Accord (Nature/biodiversity priority area) and lastly the top ranking cities in European Local Climate Plans Initiative in the last 10 years [3], a sample of 10 cities was selected. Then, following the Targets 12 and 14 that aims to increase biodiversity in urban planning processes, an analytical framework of 30 criteria mainly focusing on collaborative governance and public participation is established through several iterations with a group of experts from Knowledge center for Biodiversity*, The Nature of Cities, Directorate General of Research TD, ICLEI, DGENV and HafenCity University. The preliminary results investigate the so-called 6 lighthouse European cities having an existing Urban Nature plan for at least the last 3 years towards advancing the so called EU Biodiversity strategy dashboard [4]. It emerges that public participation and collaborative governance aspects are rarely considered as an integrated part from the established urban greening plans, nonetheless, several guidance calls on adopting a more co-created approaches when setting up the urban nature plans.