“This innovative report from the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities proposes new, dynamic ideas for reversing the biodiversity decline at local and regional level,” Congress co-rapporteur Hermanni Backer Johnsen (Finland, SOC/G/PD) will say at a panel debate on Tuesday 20 October in Yerevan, Armenia, entitled “Nature of the edge: how local and regional authorities can promote biodiversity”.

The Congress is holding the side event during the Conference of States parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), in the Nordic Pavilion at 11 am local time, to present the first-ever Congress report focused on biodiversity loss and proposing subnational action plans, innovative finance and other new policies to promote biodiversity and help meet national and international commitments.

“Since 1980, Europe’s farmland birds have declined by 60%, meaning more than 300 million birds lost. Grassland butterflies, a key indicator of our pollinators, have fallen by 47% since 1991, and the land that sustains them is vanishing under our feet: between 2012 and 2018, urban areas in the EU and UK took 3,581 square kilometres of land,” said the Rapporteur.

“International and national targets are essential, but for that train to move forward, it needs to be planted firmly on the tracks of local and regional governance,” he underlined, highlighting the key role of local and regional authorities can play in supporting biodiversity through spatial planning, regulation and permitting, forestry and management of public land, water governance, agriculture and rural development and community-led conservation.

The report’s resolution, for debate and adoption at the Congress plenary session in March 2027, guides local and regional authorities in taking an ambitious, central role in actively promoting biodiversity in a multilevel governance approach. Specifically, it asks them to:

• develop local and regional biodiversity strategies and action plans that mainstream ecological targets across non-environmental sectors such as municipal budgeting, transport and zoning and planning;
   
• underpin action with an understanding of the true value of biodiversity, including the value of nature to people’s health and wellbeing, applying the “rights of nature” concept at sub-national level, and the elimination of harmful subsidies and reorientation of spending towards green procurement;
   
• practice environmental accounting that recognises natural capital as an asset that, when lost, usually involves long-term financial costs outweighing short-term gains;
   
• ensure inclusive consultative processes for local people, businesses and interests, which can include deliberative democracy models such as citizens’ assemblies.

The report also supports finding ways to expand and create access to funding, including from international institutions.

By applying concrete steps and best practice, progress can be made towards reversing biodiversity decline and ensuring a healthy future for Europe’s ecology, the report shows.

Goldman Environmental Prize winner and Director of Belgian NGO Regionaal Landschap Kempen en Maasland (RLKM) Ignace Schops and President of EUROPARC Federation (representing Europe’s protected areas) Michael Hošek will also take part in the debate.