ICLEI BiodiverCities Advisory Committee forges institutional linkage with URBIO

The ICLEI Cities Biodiversity Center is delighted to have established an institutional link between its BiodiverCities Advisory Committee and the Urban Biodiversity and Design (URBIO) network. URBIO is an open worldwide scientific network for education and research with the aim to promote urban biodiversity through a continuing dialogue with the Convention on Biological Diversity Global Partnership on “Cities and Biodiversity”. The link will be created through the exchange of board members, with Mayor Troy Pickard of Joondalup, Australia (Chair of the BiodiverCities Advisory Committee) taking a seat on the URBIO Advisory Board and Professor Norbert Müller (President of URBIO) assuming a seat on the BiodiverCities Advisory Committee. This new found synergy hosts significant potential to raise the profile of the urban biodiversity and ecosystem management agenda.

As a means to foster the scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners and stakeholders, the URBIO network will be hosting the 3rd International Conference of Urban Biodiversity and Design (URBIO 2012 - http://www.hss.iitb.ac.in/urbio2012/) which is being organized by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and will be held in Mumbai, India from 8th – 12th October 2012. The theme of the conference is ‘Urban Biodiversity and Climate Change; Adaptation and Mitigation’.

The ICLEI Cities Biodiversity Center strongly encourages local government officials and representatives to attend and contribute to the URBIO 2012 conference, which will feed into deliberations at the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Hyderabad, as well as into the Cities for Life: City and Sub-National Biodiversity Summit, taking place in parallel to the COP on the 15th and 16th October 2012.

Prof. Dr. Habil. Norbert Müller
Professor for Landscape Management and Restoration Ecology
Head of the Working Group Biodiversity & Design and URBIO Office

Norbert Müller is a Professor in Landscape Management and Restoration Ecology at the University of Applied Sciences in Erfurt, Germany with 30 years of research and application experience in the fields of urban biodiversity, conservation biology and sustainable design. In 2008 he founded URBIO - the International network for Urban Biodiversity and Design –with currently over 800 researchers and practitioners and is the advisor for the UNCBD “Global Partnership on Cities and Biodiversity”. He has published a large number of papers – and recently (2010) the first book on “Urban Biodiversity and Design”.