Biodiversity high on the agenda of ICLEI World Congress

From 14 to 18 June 2009, 600 participants from 57 countries gathered in the City of Edmonton in Western Canada for the triennial World Congress of ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainabiltity, a global network of 1100 cities working on sustainable development. The program touched on many areas of urban environmental sustainability, from Climate & Energy to Biodiversity and from Resilience & Adaptation to Water, in large plenaries and small working groups. 

Biodiversity was high on the Congress’ agenda with sessions focused on biodiversity management and how to improve implementation at local level (session C5), ICLEI’s Biodiversity Initiative (session A3), and the importance of local biodiversity for sustainability (session B3). The event also included biodiversity related site visits, a mayoral roundtable on the value of ecosystems and keynote plenary presentations on biodiversity by Pavan Sukdev (Leader of UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative, study leader for ‘The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity’ Report (TEEB) and Head of Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets Business in India) and George Greene (Regional Council for North America & the Caribbean, IUCN).

Download speaker presentations here 

At the ICLEI World Congress, a motion was passed that Local Action for Biodiversity would be adopted as a global ICLEI initiative to carry on beyond June 2009. Download this council resolution here

See more information about the ICLEI World Congress including videos,  photographs and news updates here