President Biden’s American Jobs Plan lays out a path to build back better (BBB) grounded in justice and climate solutions through a $2 trillion investment. While the plan relies heavily on the built environment, cities across the world continue to advance climate solutions, economies, health and equity through nature.

In this special US Climate Week edition of the ICLEI’s ongoing CitiesWithNature series, we are joined by Commissioners Anna Hansen of Santa Fe County, N.M., and Sue Shink of Washtenaw County, Mich., to see what local biodiversity policy looks like. Ingrid Coetzee, Director of Biodiversity, Nature and Health in ICLEI’s Cape Town-based Cities Biodiversity Center, delves an overview of the global biodiversity agenda and governing frameworks, and ICLEI USA’s Josh Radoff, Zero Carbon Cities Advisor, connects the dots between the Biden plan and local nature-based climate solutions.

The Cities Biodiversity Center, embedded in the ICLEI Africa Secretariat and the focal point for subnational action in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), will help to provide a vision of what American cities could look like if the U.S. were to sign on to the CBD and elevate nature in its BBB plan.