Subproject DUH

"Knowledge transfer – Knowledge transfer, municipal strategies and ecosystem services"

Background: Currently, there is an array of strategic approaches with which cities and communities anchor the consideration of biodiversity issues for developed areas in community procedure. To name a few are landscape plans, green and open-space concepts, species protection programmes, and new in recent years, community biodiversity strategies. These approaches are met with varying resonance among planning professionals of the municipal government. Even landscape plans or species protection programmes do not seem suited to anchor questions of biological diversity into the mentality of citizens. In contrast to this, the instrument of community biodiversity strategies in combination with so-called ecosystem services would have much more to offer.

Subproject "Knowledge transfer": As part of the subproject, current strategic documents from community practice had been analysed for the anchoring of biodiversity issues. This was to process the strengths and weaknesses of different concepts using a text analysis and work on a qualified overview of different approaches towards strategic approaches of inner city nature protection. The results of this analysis were used to formulate general recommendations for the development of biodiversity strategies in the participating cities, Bielefeld and Heidelberg. Local stakeholders had been involved in the development of strategies. To this end, there had been according information and participation events, in which the communities were supported by Deutsche Umwelthilfe.