What's Happening?
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has adopted new voluntary global guidance for sustainable wildlife management (SWM) that explicitly extends its consideration to urban contexts. This marks a significant shift from traditional wildlife management,
which often focused on rural areas. The guidance, developed through a participatory process involving various stakeholders including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, calls for integrating SWM into urban planning. This includes implementing nature-based solutions, updating urban wildlife management guidelines, developing strategies for human-wildlife conflict prevention and response, and fostering wildlife literacy among urban residents. The new framework challenges the implicit notion that cities are exclusively for humans and certain non-human species, promoting a broader reflection on what urban SWM entails for coexisting populations. This development acknowledges that cities are not peripheral wildlife habitats but support diverse wildlife communities, including threatened species, and bring humans and wildlife into frequent contact.
Why It's Important?
This policy shift is crucial for U.S. cities as it provides a framework for more inclusive and ecologically sustainable urban development. With growing urbanization, human-wildlife interactions are becoming more frequent, leading to complex challenges related to differing values, competing interests, and environmental inequality. The CBD's guidance encourages U.S. urban planners and policymakers to adopt participatory approaches that consider diverse perspectives, including those of residents, conservation organizations, and public health authorities. By integrating SWM into urban planning, cities can better manage green spaces, water bodies, and habitat corridors, which not only support biodiversity but also contribute to human health and urban cooling. This can lead to more resilient urban ecosystems and reduce conflicts arising from human-wildlife coexistence, ultimately fostering a more harmonious relationship between urban dwellers and the natural world.
What's Next?
U.S. cities and local governments will likely begin to review and adapt their urban planning and wildlife management strategies to align with the new CBD guidance. This could involve developing new local ordinances, updating existing urban design plans, and investing in programs that promote wildlife literacy and community engagement. Collaboration between municipal departments, conservation groups, and academic institutions is expected to increase to develop context-specific solutions for urban wildlife challenges. Furthermore, there may be a push for increased funding at subnational and local levels to implement these new SWM approaches, as recognized by COP17. The emphasis on inclusive decision-making suggests that public forums and participatory design processes will become more common in urban development projects that impact wildlife.
Beyond the Headlines
The integration of SWM into urban policy raises deeper ethical and social justice questions. It highlights the need to address environmental inequality, ensuring that the costs and benefits of living with urban wildlife are shared equitably across all communities, not disproportionately borne by historically marginalized groups. This framework encourages a re-evaluation of what constitutes a 'natural' ecosystem in urban settings and challenges anthropocentric views of city spaces. It also opens avenues for innovative, experimental approaches to wildlife management that can foster empathy and understanding between different ways of knowing, such as through arts-based processes or deliberative democracy. Ultimately, this shift could lead to a more holistic understanding of urban environments as shared spaces, promoting multispecies justice and fostering stronger connections between urban residents and their local ecosystems.
