Natural Capital at ASEAN-India workshop

Dr Dan Richards, principal investigator of the Natural Capital Singapore project, spoke at the ASEAN-India Workshop on Urban Biodiversity and Application of the City Biodiversity Index, which was held in Singapore on the 24-26th September 2019. He joined representatives from India and ASEAN countries, who shared about the work that their cities are doing to support and enhance urban biodiversity.

Dr Richards spoke about the importance of urban biodiversity as a source of “natural capital”. Biodiversity is valuable in cities because it can help make them more comfortable for people to live in; for example, trees provide shade and help cool the air. Animals such as birds also provide functions such as eating pest species, and are appreciated by people for their beauty. To help biodiversity in Indian and ASEAN cities we need to engage the public in citizen science, encourage enthusiasm for conservation, and find ways to bring natural greenery such as forests, mangroves, and wetlands, back into urban areas.

The ASEAN-India Workshop on Urban Biodiversity and Application of the City Biodiversity Index aims to enhance awareness on the importance and value of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services and its linkages to urbanisation; provide a platform for ASEAN and Indian cities to share their experiences on the challenges and opportunities for integrating urban biodiversity conservation; and share the City Biodiversity Index (CBI), also known as the Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity (Singapore Index), as a monitoring tool and encourage ASEAN and Indian cities to apply to evaluate their biodiversity conservation efforts.