Husqvarna has announced the launch of a new international biodiversity advisory board that will “share knowledge” to create more wildlife-friendly landscapes.

Yvette Henshall-Bell, president global professional at Husqvarna, said that the company wanted to “play a part in safeguarding biodiversity”.

The forward-thinking board will be chaired by Thomas Elmqvist, professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm Resilience Centre, part of Stockholm University in Sweden, the manufacturer’s home country.

Speaking at Husqvarna’s ninth annual Living City conference in Paris, where the board was announced, Elmqvist said that “cities are crucial for a sustainable planet and biodiversity” and “urbanisation is creating new types of landscapes and challenges”.

HUGSI’s new biodiversity feature on Paris

A new feature to the Husqvarna Urban Green Space Index (HUGSI) will also help to present the opportunities available for adding more biodiverse areas to urban environments.

From 29 November, a new Biodiversity Alert will be added to the index, which has been quantifying green space since 2019, when it was first launched at Husqvarna’s Living City event that year. The open dataset of curated urban green data incorporates survey results on individual vegetative prime data from 279 cities across 61 countries.

The new HUGSI feature will quantify areas of high biodiversity potential, how these are connected and how they change over time on a macro level.

Participating cities will receive a Biodiversity Indicator Score, which will be the Nature Potential Score multiplied by the Nature Connectivity Score. A Biodiversity Alert will point out any loss of biodiverse areas.