International Day for Biological Diversity is just around the corner, on 22 May. This year’s theme is ‘acting locally for global impact’ – an ethos central to our work of facilitating and amplifying nature-based progress at the local and subnational government level to the global scale.
This year’s campaign connects local initiatives directly to the 23 global targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – the same framework that ICLEI Oceania is helping cities across our region to understand, act on, and report against through the CitiesWithNature and RegionsWithNature Action Platforms.
These platforms are formally recognised under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity as the official mechanism for local biodiversity reporting, with city actions and data feeding directly into national dashboards within the CBD system and contributing to the global review of collective progress. In short, your city’s local actions don’t stop at your borders. CitiesWithNature and RegionsWithNature are the only non-state actor platforms with a recognised pathway for subnational governments to contribute information toward the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Your city’s actions for nature belong on the world stage. By joining CitiesWithNature or RegionsWithNature, you don’t just make a commitment to your community, but also to your country. And you take your place among the world’s cities and regions shaping a nature-positive future. Every green corridor created, every wetland restored, every policy adopted gets counted, reported and recognised globally.