Practices for safeguarding biodiversity in Espoo

The Espoo Story sets the city the ambitious goal of achieving no net loss of biodiversity. In order to achieve this goal, we have launched the Nature-wise Espoo initiative, during which we will define actions for preserving biodiversity in Espoo. Even before the Nature-wise Espoo initiative, Espoo has observed the general practice of mitigating and avoiding harm to the environment as well as restoring local natural values. This publication describes the practices used in Espoo to safeguard biodiversity, especially from the perspective of avoiding, mitigating and compensating for any harm caused to nature.

Avoiding harm to nature is the most effective way to preserve biodiversity. Cities and municipalities have several means of control with which to avoid harm to nature. For example, city planning is used to guide construction outside valuable natural sites, strengthen wildlife corridors, control stormwater management and safeguard ecosystem services important to residents. In addition, detailed planning is used to safeguard and increase diverse urban green elements such as parks, local forests, street trees and lush gardens. Up-to-date nature information, surveys and reports are a prerequisite for the application of each level of the mitigation hierarchy.

From the perspective of local restoration and mitigation of harm to nature, the planning and maintenance of the city’s green areas also play an important role. In the case of urban forests, the primary aim is to meet the need for both recreational use and preservation of ecological values, and these two can be reconciled by, for example, guiding outdoor enthusiasts to use established routes to minimise human activity in other parts of the environment. Espoo encourages landowners, organisations and residents to adopt operating models that support biodiversity.

Ecological compensation is still a new operating model, both globally and in Finland. This means that Espoo does not yet have practical experience in implementing ecological compensation in the context of construction projects. The Hepokorvenkallio data centre is the first project in connection with which the possibility of ecological compensation has been investigated.