In preparation for the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to adopt the Global Biodiversity Framework, UN-Habitat has prepared a white paper Cities and Nature: Planning for the Future, which highlights new principles and actions to improve the quality of urbanization, recognizing the importance of nature in cities and the preventative role of spatial planning. It also offers a novel methodology to prioritize interventions along a preserve-conserve-…

Launch of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework requires an integrated territorial (both urban and rural) approach for the sustainable management of biodiversity. Linkages between urban processes and rural transformation across municipalities, countries, and world regions are essential for biodiversity conservation. Urban-rural linkages are constituted by reciprocal and repetitive flows of people, goods, and financial and environmental services between specific rural, peri-urban, and…

This report explores some of the critical challenges that converge at the intersection of climate change and land governance. Some of these challenges are droughts, desertification, disaster risk, land and water management, land degradation and restoration, soil erosion and conservation, biodiversity, and food security.

This report provides an overview on the importance of the Informal Waste and Recovery Sector (IWRS) for ending plastic pollution. It outlines how the current negotiations towards a global instrument to end plastic pollution can leverage a just transition of the IWRS. It calls for the just transition of the IWRS to be fair, inclusive, and equitable, generating and preserving decent work opportunities in a way that leaves no one behind.