UN-HABITAT and UNEP, in collaboration with the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) recently launched two publications - “Promoting Biodiversity in and around the Lake Victoria Basin,” and “Local Action for Biodiversity, a Series of Local Cases”. Case studies from around the world in both books show how cities are cooperating with national governments and other key partners to utilise and conserve their surroundings.

The venue of launch was the Mayors’ Conference at the 9th Conference of the Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn Germany on 28 May 2008. Although they occupy only 2 percent of the total land surface of Earth, cities use 75 percent of the planet’s natural resources. This fact, combined with increasing levels of urbanisation and subsequent heavy reliance on ecosystem services has resulted in a multitude of threats to the urban environment: habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, over-exploitation of natural resources, invasion of alien species, pollution and climate change.

Conversely, in the words of Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director, “there are many shining examples of intelligent management of the planet's nature-based resources. The time has come to accelerate and replicate them across the globe backed by sufficient finance, creative market mechanisms, and strengthening of efforts to achieve the three objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity, including access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, and a new sense of urgency.”