Natural Resource Management is the integrated delivery of environmental projects to enhance and improve biodiversity, soils and water. NRM also provides cutting edge educational and engagement methodologies to a wide variety of communities. Traditional NRM focusses on rural, pastoral and agricultural communities to improve sustainable land management. With the creation of the Landscape Act 2019 Adelade became home to the worlds first exclusively urban NRM Board. How Green Adelaide operates to deliver nature positive outcomes for the city through revegetation and rewilding projects, policy and strategy creation and facilitation support and funding for partner organisations and grass roots groups, represents world first approaches to supporting urban nature.
This talk focuses on the reasons for, and advantages of, an urban NRM Board. It focuses on Green Adelaide’s recent successes including creating an Urban Greening Strategy, large scale revegetation and rewilding projects and broad-based community engagement methodologies. In particular, the role of aspirational targets, such as National Park City, translocating platypus to the river Torrens/Karawirra Pari and reestablishing butterflies using conservation dogs, will highlight how Green Adelaide engages the community to create significant improvements in urban ecology.

Freshwater habitats such as ponds are under pressure from urbanisation in Australia and worldwide. Many ponds have been altered or destroyed to make way for housing and industrial development, and these processes are ongoing. To date, the creation of new ponds in Australian cities has focused almost exclusively on the provision of ecosystem services such as the filtration of polluted stormwater runoff. Thus, most new ponds are not providing like-for-like habitat replacement, but are instead designed to capture and store heavy metals, pesticides and other toxic chemicals. These ponds can therefore act as ecological traps for wildlife. In this talk, I will propose a new approach – the creation of ponds as habitat for freshwater biodiversity, including plants, macroinvertebrates and amphibians. Taking evidence from Switzerland and other European countries, I will propose the creation of many small ponds across a landscape, fed with clean water (as opposed to polluted stormwater), as an effective conservation strategy in urban environments.

A key barrier to the development of nature positive cities is the unknown cost of implementing and maintaining novel urban designs. To address this gap, we sought to estimate the relative cost of a set of Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design (BSUD) actions intended to enhance habitat and mitigate threats for native fauna, while also providing health and wellbeing benefits for people. We employed expert elicitation to estimate the cost of implementing BSUD in a case study greenfield residential development site in peri-urban Melbourne, Australia. We shortlisted 18 BSUD actions proposed for different areas of the development including streetscapes, linear corridors and small community parks. Actions ranged from different planting designs to installing habitat analogues and elevated watering points for wildlife. With the assistance of the landholder, we recruited four participants whose expertise spanned engineering, landscape architecture, urban design, integrated water management, urban planning, and urban heat mitigation. Participants were primed with detailed background information for each action (e.g., rationale, description, target species, proposed location) and were asked to individually estimate the relative cost of each action by comparing it to a ‘business-as-usual’ (BAU) approach. This involved categorising each action as: i) cheaper; ii) approximately the same; iii) slightly more; iv) a lot more; or v) prohibitively more expensive than BAU. We then facilitated an online workshop where participants were asked to reach a consensus regarding the relative cost of each action. Our expert participants concluded that most actions assessed (78%) were likely to cost the same, or only slightly more, than a BAU approach. This result suggests that BSUD is both feasible to implement and relatively affordable to incorporate into a greenfield community development. This presentation will outline some of the key priorities and next steps needed to mainstream the development of nature positive cities.

The ambitious goals of reversing nature loss in the short term and promoting full nature recovery in the longer term are central to nature-positive strategies. While many of these have a focus on wilderness and “natural” areas, one outcome of embracing these goals for urban ecosystems is the potential to make our growing cities more livable. However, the business as usual mindsets and values that underpin much of conservation biology, often regarded as a “crisis discipline”, may not be sufficient for achieving this and in some cases, may stifle innovative efforts to promote biodiversity in cities. I examine opportunities to look at nature in cities in new ways to integrate biodiversity conservation into city planning, infrastructure, and everyday life, drawing. This is framed around an urgent need to celebrate the stories of the idiosyncratic assemblage of flora and fauna that we already share our cities with as well as communicate how cities are dynamic ecosystems, and not just human-dominated “unnatural” spaces. Drawing on examples from work in and around Sydney, I argue for rethinking some of conservation biology’s more purist ideals, such as debates over native vs. exotic species, the primacy of species with legislative protection over others, and a reliance of top-down approaches that may not promote inclusive governance and local stewardship, ultimately helping communities to care for urban nature. To best serve the diverse community of humans that live in our cities ecologists must explore how we can embed equity and access to nature, so that all urban residents benefit from the health, cultural, and social values delivered by urban nature and biodiversity. Ultimately, this vision calls for a paradigm where biodiversity thrives alongside people, and cities become active contributors to global conservation goals, in ways that are place-based and acknowledge the unquestionable uniqueness of urban ecosystems.

As urban density increases at an astonishing rate and residential garden sizes diminish, large green spaces within cities are increasingly recognised as critical to maintaining urban biodiversity. Historically, these expansive urban green infrastructures, often perceived as single-use amenities, have faced persistent misconceptions regarding their ecological value, particularly in the context of golf courses. We challenge the common misconception that such spaces are inherently water-intensive, ecologically barren and provide negligible environmental benefits.
We are highlighting the profound and frequently underestimated contributions of golf courses to urban ecosystems. Far from being ecological voids, these managed landscapes offer unique protective environments for a diverse array of biodiversity.
We will showcase the wide variety of innovative initiatives currently underway across Australian golf courses, demonstrating their active role in fostering ecological health and contributing to their community. Examples include:
• their role in the urban environment as fauna habitats and sanctuaries
• custodianship of rare and threatened plant species
• partnerships with researchers and educational institutions
• rare native fish breeding programs
• pest management (such as cane toad control)
• harvesting plants from the course for a degustation dinner
• emerging partnerships with Indigenous Australians - including fostering economic support through the procurement of plants from an Indigenous-owned nursery.

These novel projects illustrate how the Australian golf industry is proactively redefining its role in environmental stewardship, driving significant ecological change, and contributing to a more sustainable future.

This presentation underscores that golf courses not only significantly safeguard and enrich the ecological fabric of our cities for future generations but also offer inspirational and replicable models for the broader management of green spaces throughout Australia and beyond.

Urban nature is increasingly recognised for its contributions to mental health and wellbeing. Some examples are stress reduction, enhancing positive emotions, and fostering social connection. Yet, much of the existing evidence centers on dominant populations in high-income countries, with limited attention to the wellbeing of migrant communities. Migrant communities face significant mental health challenges, including discrimination, isolation, and trauma. With over 281 million international migrants and 71.4 million displaced people globally, nature exposure presents a promising opportunity to support their wellbeing.

In response to this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review to explore how urban nature impacts the wellbeing of migrant communities. Following the PRISMA guidelines and using the PICO framework, we reviewed 39 peer-reviewed studies that encompassed diverse methodologies and global contexts.

Our analysis identified 36 wellbeing impacts and 30 pathways through which urban nature influences wellbeing across seven wellbeing domains: general, mental, emotional, subjective, psychological, social, and spiritual. Benefits included emotional uplift, increased social interaction, and a stronger sense of belonging. However, negative impacts such as alienation and perceived unsafety were also reported. Seven key barriers were identified, most commonly safety concerns, lack of information, and poor maintenance. Notably, only two studies focused on the Southern Hemisphere, highlighting a critical geographical gap.

This review presents a novel synthesis of the role of urban nature in promoting the wellbeing of migrants. It introduces a framework that organises impacts, pathways, and barriers across four wellbeing contexts: intrapersonal, interpersonal, cultural, and place-based. Findings offer practical insights for designing inclusive green spaces and call for further research in underrepresented regions.

Business-as-usual urban development has led to the global clearing, fragmentation and biotic homogenisation of ecosystems – including many water-related ecosystems that have been drained or polluted. Consequently, we face a coupled biodiversity extinction crisis and climate crisis that requires us to rethink how we can better plan and design cities for biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as people. Here, we apply the novel Nature-Water Design (NWD) framework which integrates two pre-existing frameworks essential to urban nature-based solutions: Water and Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD & BSUD). At our case study site, we compare water and biodiversity outcomes across three design scenarios for a residential street in Beveridge North (VIC). Our results demonstrate the benefits of designing for Nature and Water (WSUD & BSUD) together, compared to Business-as-Usual (BAU) or WSUD alone. The NWD scenario measured notable improvements for WSUD outcomes (e.g., site permeability, runoff, water quality), including outcomes with benefits to people using the street (cooling and harvesting potential). The NWD scenario also increased the Vegetation Diversity Index, contributing more benefits to the local ecosystem than BAU and WSUD scenarios; and had the greatest likelihood of supporting four local native species. With more case studies trialling NWD’s integrated approach, we anticipate that new norms in urban planning, design and development can be established with positive contributions to local native biodiversity and water outcomes in ‘onsets’ (onsite) - as opposed to offsets (offsite).