No Net Loss City project (2021-2022) organized its final seminar 4.10.2022 in Kuntatalo, Helsinki. The project developed recommendations and a model for municipalities on how to introduce biodiversity offsetting into their land use and planning processes. Land use and planning plays a central role in halting the biodiversity loss – a significant part of natural values is lost permanently through small decisions at city or municipal level.
No Net Loss City (NNL City) was funded by Sitra (The Finnish Innovation Fund) and Kuntaliitto (Association of Finnish Municipalities). The consortium included University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), and Akordi. The partner municipalities/cities were Jyväskylä, Lahti, Helsinki and Espoo. The project organized four workshops, in which the offsetting model was developed in collaboration with municipality planning experts. The project also organized municipality workshops for citizens, interviewed green space users, and employees of Lahti regarding socio-cultural impacts of offsets. In addition, NNL City participated in developing a pilot case for biodiversity offsetting in Kuramäki area of Jyväskylä.
The final report (in Finnish) of the project provides suggestions on how to avoid, mitigate and compensate negative biodiversity impacts. The final seminar recording (in Finnish) is available here.
Several researchers from BOOST took part in NNL City. Now the work will be continued in BOOST’s work package 6.