City life is becoming the default human experience. While being engines for development, exchange and opportunity, cities and their expected growth are also exacerbating some of the world’s most serious environmental challenges, including rising temperatures, biodiversity loss and land use change. Cities will have to handle increasing climate risks: by 2050, 1.6 billion city residents will face extreme heat and by 2100, cities around the world could warm by 4°C on average, exposing the growing urban population to conditions that will damage human health, productivity, and quality of life.

To make peace with nature and beat the rising heat, we need to design and redesign our urban environments with nature in mind. The good news is that protecting and restoring natural ecosystems can help improve quality of life in cities. Nature-based solutions can provide natural cooling, better air and water quality, and healthier communities, but the benefits and ecosystem services that biodiversity provides need to be better understood and leveraged to increase implementation and bring about change at a local and global level.

This session will focus on the role of nature as an adaptation tool, and how national and local governments can provide access to cooling while mitigating climate risks and supporting biodiversity. The discussion will enable exchanges between global experts, countries and cities on the opportunities to catalyze restoration in the framework of urban planning. It will include announcements on cities’ commitments to the Nature for Cool Cities Challenge, and on global collaboration in the framework of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. A dedicated exchange will take place on nature financing, and on the latest efforts to track urban nature investments.

Objectives

• Underline the important role of cities in the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems, and effectiveness of NbS to tackle climate risks in cities.
• Demonstrate demand for the support needed in financing and implementing NbS among cities in the Global South.
• Socialize the Beat the Heat: Nature for Cool Cities Challenge among partners, potential participating cities, and potential financiers of the challenge.
• Provide a call for cities to join, with evidence that the pledge is there.