On behalf of the Swiss Federal Office for Environment (FOEN) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), I have the great pleasure to invite you to the side-event “Best practices for biodiversity conservation in European urban areas” during the Eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Hyderabad, India on Friday 12 October from 13:15 – 14:45.

The previous Conference of the Parties to the CBD in Nagoya, Japan has resulted in a Plan of Action on Subnational Governments, Cities and Other Local Authorities for Biodiversity. The Plan of Action calls for dissemination of best practices to better promote local efforts and to facilitate communications between all levels of government, and for those governments to work together in developing their respective biodiversity strategies and action plans.