We, the mayors of Finland's ten largest cities, understand the importance of biodiversity and recognise the seriousness of its loss and the urgency of addressing it. Biodiversity is important for human well-being, health, the economy and the vitality of cities, and we believe it is important that nature remains diverse for future generations in order to safeguard their well-being.
Our cities play a key role in meeting the targets of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the EU Biodiversity Strategy to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and to reverse it immediately afterwards. As cities, we want to be part of this work and to be active players in the implementation of Finland's biodiversity strategy.
As cities, we have long been taking action to protect biodiversity. We are committed to continuing this work in an even more goal-oriented manner. We are comprehensively and diversely investigating how to halt the loss of biodiversity.
We want our example to encourage other cities in Finland and internationally to pay attention to protecting and enhancing biodiversity as the cities grow. At the same time, we will have a positive impact on mitigating climate change and on adapting to it.
In Tampere on 11 September 2024, we agreed on the following common objectives and actions to boost our positive impact on nature.
1. We will commit to developing and maintaining the blue and green areas of our cities in order to support biodiversity and to promote the well-being of citizens. In order to safeguard local nature, we will also pay attention to the global impacts of our activities.
2. We want to bring the pursuit of nature positivity alongside climate change mitigation in the strategies of our cities. We will consider nature-positive targets in the next strategy update, if they have not already been set in our city. We will investigate what stopping the loss of biodiversity by 2030 will require from our city. We will also set concrete, measurable targets for our city.
3. We will support and encourage both the EU and the Finnish Government in preparing and implementing their biodiversity-related regulations. We believe that, in order to achieve a feasible result that takes into account the specific characteristics of the regions, cities must be strongly involved in the planning of implementation, including in the case of growth centres.
4. We will pool our resources in biodiversity work and the preparation of an implementation plan for the EU Nature Restoration Law in Finland. We will set an example in Finland and internationally by sharing our best practices and collaborating with other cities and stakeholders such as businesses, research institutes, NGOs and residents and organisations. We will raise the ambition of our nature-related activities in our international networks by highlighting concrete, measurable actions.
5. We will meet once a year at the Urban Nature Forum to assess progress and update our collaborative agenda to tackle the loss of biodiversity. In 2025, we will meet in Espoo.
Through these actions, we are demonstrating our commitment to strengthening biodiversity and building a sustainable future for all citizens and future generations.
Mayor Juhana Vartiainen, City of Helsinki
Mayor Kalervo Kummola, City of Tampere
Mayor Jukka Mäkelä, City of Espoo
Mayor Pekka Timonen, City of Vantaa
Mayor Ari Alatossava, City of Oulu
Mayor Minna Arve, City of Turku
Mayor Timo Koivisto, City of Jyväskylä
Mayor Soile Lahti, City of Kuopio
Mayor Niko Kyynäräinen, City of Lahti
Mayor Lauri Inna, City of Pori.
