HUGSI Bags Award of Excellence at UpLink WEF’s BiodiverCities Challenge

We are super excited and overwhelmed to share yet another achievement by Team HUGSI.  HUGSI.green has been recognized and awarded a Top Innovator by UpLink - World Economic Forum as part of the BiodiverCities Challenge! Through this article, I intend to bring awareness about the idea, the inevitable consideration to give importance to such initiatives, and an urge to join this community to make cities greener for a sustainable future.

To talk about the BiodiverCities Challenge, let us first see the meaning of Biodiversity and what led to such an initiative as the BiodiverCities Challenge. As we speak here in 2022, “Biodiversity Conservation” has now become a matter of high significance. Fortunately, a few recognized organizations are coming together on the same stage, under the same ceiling, to think and act on restoring sustainable biodiversity in urban cities especially.

BiodiverCities Challenge 2022

The BiodiverCities UpLink Challenge showcases successful solutions that contribute to advancing the global transition to BiodiverCities by 2030 and help connect them to opportunities that can scale and accelerate their impact. This challenge was an initiative led by the founders to make a global call for top innovators who are building solutions to make cities nature-positive. 

A lot of global innovators are building transforming solutions to bring biodiversity back to the urban cities to meet an ultimate goal - that is to accelerate the transition to nature-positive cities by serving yet another initiative of “BiodiverCities by 2030”. 

Why Initiatives like BiodiverCities Challenge are Needed?

According to the UN’s projected predictions, today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. The buildings are accounted for 30% of global energy consumption and 28% of energy-related carbon emissions.

Everything above and more is expected to rise if no such actions are planned out, starting just now. Every cloud has a silver lining and everything is just not lost yet. 

“Increasing the biodiversity in the urban cities will not only uplift the overall resilience of the city against the environmental impact but also boost confidence among the residents and enhances the well-being of all the living forms of life.”- we firmly believe in this and take it.

How BiodiverCities Challenge Came to Life?

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Nature and Business Report, a nature-positive pathway in the infrastructure and built environment could create over $3 trillion in business opportunities and create 117 million jobs by 2030. This opportunity motivated the WEF to collaborate with the Colombian Government to come up with the “BiodiverCities Challenge- to make cities nature-positive by 2030”. It’s an open invitation to the world’s leading innovators to come up with ideas and solutions to restore biodiversity in urban cities.

This remarkable initiative of UpLink WEF combines the latest research with practical solutions for sustainable, inclusive, and nature-positive urban development at a global level. The Global Commission on BiodiverCities by 2030 has advised implementing a shared concept to integrate cities. 

Outcomes of the BiodiverCities Challenge

The initiative became a huge success for the visionary people aiming for the goal to achieve the concept of BiodiverCities by 2030. A total of 77 innovative solutions were presented during the challenge that is actually beyond the phase of ideation and implementation.

The top 15 innovations that are awarded and recognized will now take part in the “UpLink’s Engagement Programme”. They are set to receive a huge boost in terms of getting resources for scaling up the projects and vision as well. 

Other than HUGSI, the following organizations were also highlighted in the challenge:

• BitaGreen

  helps people to find the best locations for green infrastructure within the city.

• Hot Heart

  plans to heat Helsinki without emitting carbon of any kind into the atmosphere.

• Idas Valley Community Trails

  maintains free trails in neglected areas of Cape Town and supports communities trying to restore and maintain lands by growing plants.

• Latitudo 40

  uses satellites to create a digital twin of the cities and track green projects.

• Living Seawalls

  is bringing marine life back to urbanism and concrete coastlines for certain species.

• Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences

  aims to turn citizens into beach monitoring scientists delivering awareness in multiple languages.

• SEED Certification

  is proposing a new standard of sustainable housing by evaluating the ecological value of neighborhoods and their impact on biodiversity.

• The Natural History Consortium

  empowers residents and locals to monitor biodiversity and protect nature in neighborhoods.

• Nature Positive Urban Schools

  provides every child access to seamless learning in a healthy outdoor environment.

• PopUP Forest

  wants to transform the thinking of local people and communities by creating immersive nature experiences to amplify grassroots efforts.

• The Parque Jaime Duque Foundation

  is restoring Bogota’s Highland Plateau by safeguarding and expanding wetlands.

• RESILIO

  is building and expanding an architectural network of smart rooftops in Amsterdam that could act as mini reservoirs increasing biodiversity by reducing the extreme impacts of drought.

• Sanergy

  is a waste management innovation in Kenya creating valuable products out of the waste, protecting the health of the urban water streams, and avoiding dumping in landfills.

• The Pollinator Movement by Santuario de Alves

  is a program that educates and helps people to transform their front/back yards into a habitat for birds & pollinators like bees, wasps, etc.

A Word from Team HUGSI

HUGSI is immensely proud to receive this award and recognition. The mentors, management, and the whole Team are super happy with their ideas, efforts, and devotion to the HUGSI project getting identified and appreciated.

Erik Swan, Director of Digital Business Exploration at Husqvarna Group, says: "Getting this recognition by an esteemed innovation platform like UpLink WEF is set to motivate us in making the world a better place for future generations to come. Husqvarna's 300-year commitment to climate preservation is finally taking great shape with an innovative initiation in the form of HUGSI. We couldn't be happier than we are today. There is more to come from us to spread the GREEN word and create a global awareness to preserve and maintain the green spaces in our neighborhoods. That is the ultimate aim of ours."

UpLink WEF Forum: A Platform that Unites the Changemakers

UpLink WEF, an open innovation platform, is designed and implemented in collaboration with Salesforce and Deloitte. The idea behind this incredible platform is to bring together top innovators providing life-changing solutions to problems through their expertise and network of the World Economic Forum. 

The aim of UpLink WEF is to nurture a world in which anyone, anywhere, with high-impact, high-quality solutions is empowered to scale actions for people and the planet.