City Biodiversity Index to Help Assess Conservation Efforts in Gangtok

ICLEI South Asia has developed the City Biodiversity Index of Gangtok as part of the INTERACT-Bio project, which is supported by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).

This is the only biodiversity index designed specifically for monitoring and evaluating biodiversity in cities. It is a self-assessment tool that will help cities to evaluate and monitor the progress of their biodiversity conservation efforts against their own individual baselines.

The index is also known as the Singapore Index on Cities Biodiversity (SI) since it was proposed by Singapore in 2008 at the Ninth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It was endorsed in 2010 at the 10th Conference of Parties to the CBD. The Index assesses the efforts of the city with regard to biodiversity conservation on the parameters of native biodiversity in the city; ecosystem services provided by biodiversity in the city and governance and management of biodiversity in the city. Each parameter is further subdivided into various indicators.

Subuhi Parvez

Subuhi is a communications specialist based out of New Delhi, India. She handles digital marketing and communications for ICLEI's South Asia secretariat. Prior to this, Subuhi was a journalist and had worked with national and international media houses in different capacities. She studied journalism at International Centre for Journalists, Washington D.C after completing her bachelors in English Literature from Miranda House, University of Delhi.