Conservationists have long used visual strategies—such as charismatic species and iconic landscapes—to build public support, as seen in European rewilding or the branding of animals like pandas. While effective, such approaches can oversimplify ecological complexity. Urban contexts intensify these dynamics. Non-native species, introduced via the pet trade or ornamental horticulture, gain appeal through exoticized aesthetics shaped by consumer trends. Curated spaces like zoos, parks, and gardens often priviledge spectacle over local ecology. Nature-based solutions combine ecological and aesthetic aims, while vernacular practices—like UK allotments or Tokyo’s improvised planters—are often excluded from formal biodiversity frameworks.
This session invites interdisciplinary dialogue on how urban aesthetics shape biodiversity policy and public understanding. We welcome case studies exploring how aesthetic norms influence which species and habitats are preserved, altered, or erased—and how such choices are justified through visual and cultural frameworks.
As urban biodiversity becomes central to GBF 2030 targets, we aim to identify culturally grounded, ecologically just, and ethically aware approaches to implementation by examining the aesthetic politics of biodiversity in cities.
Convenors
Ewa Machotka, Professor, Art History, University of Zurich
Takehiro Watanabe, Associate Professor, Environmental Anthropology, Sophia University, Tokyo
In implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF 2030), citizens' perceptions and values regarding urban biodiversity conservation significantly influence policy implementation. This study examines patterns of citizen biodiversity perception in peri-urban satoyama landscapes—traditional mosaics of forests and rice paddies—analyzing the relationship between aesthetic conventions and ecological necessity, and their policy implications. The research mainly focuses on the Zushi-Onoji Historic Environmental Conservation Area in Machida City, Tokyo, addressing GBF Target 12 on urban green and blue spaces.
Methodologically, this study conducted secondary analysis of open-ended survey responses from residents and visitors (n=506) collected in 2020-2021 to establish a baseline of citizen biodiversity perception. This was complemented by participant observation data from 2022-2025 and documentary analysis to qualitatively examine processes of perceptual transformation.
Results revealed that 92% of respondents in 2020-2021 mentioned visually salient fauna and flora, demonstrating a visual salience bias that creates implicit aesthetic hierarchies in biodiversity perception, while recognition of functionally critical but visually inconspicuous taxonomic groups—such as soil organisms and fungi— that support the foundation of ecosystem functions remained rare. Although expectations for landscape management varied by attributes such as whether respondents were landowners or residents, preferences for orderly nature predominated. Conversely, ecologically important environments appearing unmanaged (wetlands, deadwood, dense vegetation) were associated with neglect rather than ecological value.
Various community-based conservation initiatives have been undertaken in the area since the 2000s. Participant observation in ongoing paddy field management activities since 2022 revealed possibilities for perceptual transformation. Through direct experiential engagement with traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in water management and its ecological functions, shifts in evaluative frameworks were observed—from visual aesthetics to ecological aesthetics. This transformative process was facilitated not through prescriptive education, but through experiential discovery in collaborative work. These findings suggest that paddy field management can fulfill educational and social roles in urban biodiversity conservation, highlighting the importance of practice-based, culturally grounded approaches to implementing GBF 2030 in urban contexts.
How to cite: Sugiura, M.: Shifting Biodiversity Perception through TEK-Based Paddy Management in Urban Satoyama Landscapes, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-116, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-116, 2026.
Recent scholarship has examined the aesthetic and political dimensions of infrastructure, showing how built systems shape perception, behavior, and environmental governance (Winner 1980, Rich et al. 2023). Yet these works have focused largely on non-living, grey infrastructures, leaving open the question of what happens when living organisms are deliberately used in the construction of urban infrastructure. In biodiversity-oriented Nature-based Solutions (NbS), plants and animals are not incidental elements of design but intentionally selected, arranged, and maintained to achieve ecological targets and aesthetic effects.
What forms of visibility and meaning emerge when living organisms become infrastructural components within urban biodiversity planning? The analysis draws on insights from environmental aesthetics, STS, and works on the aesthetics of infrastructure, which together help illuminate how perceptual, cultural, and representational practices shape human understandings of ecological systems. Building on these literatures, I examine how NbS rely on distinct aesthetic frameworks that make certain species and vegetation legible, valuable, or emblematic within local strategy-making and implementation.
The research is grounded in long-term fieldwork and action research in Tokyo, conducted through direct involvement in the restoration and conservation of neighborhood-scale urban nature spaces. Through this work, I identify several aesthetic frameworks that shape how biodiversity is represented and acted upon: target species identified in local conservation and biodiversity strategies; iconic species that symbolize civic identity; mascot species, including stylized or imagined figures such as character mascots; and the aesthetics of vegetation, expressed through the textures, forms, and seasonal rhythms of rain gardens, planters, and spontaneous greenery.
These frameworks influence the development of local biodiversity strategy and action plan, guiding discussions about conservation priorities and shaping public expectations. They also structure the implementation of NbS, particularly stormwater-oriented interventions such as rain gardens, where tensions emerge between ecological ambition and aesthetic norms of tidiness, legibility, anxieties about pests. They interact as well with debates around ecological nativism and concerns about invasive or exotic species, which often conflict with horticultural, landscape, and construction standards that favor non-local plants. By tracing these dynamics, the paper shows how aesthetic practices shape which forms of urban biodiversity become thinkable and actionable.
How to cite: Watanabe, T.: When Species Become Infrastructure: Aesthetics and Urban Biodiversity Planning in Tokyo, Japan, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-355, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-355, 2026.
This artistic research project investigates how working with images in the Westlicher Düppeler Forst, a Natura 2000 urban forest at Berlin’s western edge, can decentre anthropocentric habits of seeing and open up new ways of imagining urban biodiversity as a web of more-than-human life. Rather than treating photographs as isolated neutral representations, the project approaches their sequences and constellations as speculative image ecologies that help shape what becomes visible and thinkable about these relations where conceptual and indicator-based understandings reach their limits.
The work unfolds through procedures that trace a gradual shift in authorship from human-directed staging towards more-than-human co-creation. Contextual photographs situate the forest within its urban surroundings and mark where city and woodland meet. Staged, portrait-like photographs of fungi, ice, stones and roots explore sculptural presences that usually fall outside charismatic images of urban green. Authorship then shifts as image-making is partly delegated to wildlife cameras triggered by animal movement, so that images arise from encounters shaped by more-than-human agency. Finally, 35mm and medium-format film is placed under bark, in tree hollows or on the forest floor so that humidity, soil and decay inscribe themselves into the emulsion, inviting the forest to act as an image-making agent.
Drawing on theories of visual thinking and posthuman and speculative philosophies, the project explores an aesthetic-epistemological approach to urban biodiversity. It asks how composed image sequences, built from these different image modalities, can generate ecological knowledge that does not emerge in textual or quantitative accounts. Here, iconic syntax is used to build relational visual structures and correspondences across images, foregrounding relations, agencies and sites that remain marginal in scientific imagery. In this sense, aesthetic practice becomes a way of thinking with and through images about urban more-than-human relations and the conditions under which they can be perceived and understood.
The contribution is proposed as an oral presentation with projected image sequences and invites discussion of artistic image practice as contributing to an aesthetic epistemology that expands how biodiversity is imagined and made legible in urban environments.
How to cite: Tscholl, M.: Speculative Image Ecologies at the Forest Edge: Artistic Research on Urban Biodiversity in Berlin, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-631, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-631, 2026.
Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) Water Garden in Giverny has long been celebrated as a masterpiece of French horticultural aesthetics, yet its cosmopolitan planting scheme reveals tensions at the heart of modern garden culture. Like many designed landscapes, Giverny privileges a visually curated “aesthetic ecosystem” dominated by spectacular plants such as hybrid Nymphaea water lilies, Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda), and bamboo species imported through late-nineteenth-century horticultural networks. Monet’s Japanese print collection, including Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760-1849) Large Flowers series, and Utagawa Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) landscapes, attests to his sustained interest in Japanese representations of charismatic plants. These charismatic ornamentals helped construct the garden’s visual appeal, but they also exemplify how aesthetic preferences can overshadow species ecology, habitat requirements, or long-term environmental effects.
Contemporary biodiversity research highlights that ornamental gardens and urban parks often promote a narrow palette of visually striking plants while marginalizing less charismatic species essential for ecological resilience. Such plantings may reduce pollinator diversity, disrupt local trophic networks, and contribute to biotic homogenization. Monet’s garden, while historically important, participates in this pattern: the emphasis on visual harmony and Japoniste exoticism masks the ecological modification inherent in its design.
By examining the Monet’s Water Garden in Giverny through the lens of biodiversity studies, this paper argues that iconic gardens, especially those celebrated for their aesthetic appeal, play an important role in shaping public perceptions of which species ‘belong’ in cultivated landscapes. Monet’s embrace of Japonisme (Western artistic engagement with Japanese aesthetics) and late-nineteenth-century cosmopolitan horticulture introduced a striking visual diversity of exotic plants and hybrids, yet this diversity was aesthetic rather than ecological. The garden became cosmopolitan but not biodiverse: a carefully orchestrated display of global ornamentals that privileged visual spectacle over ecological function. Understanding this aesthetic–ecological divide, and the role of Japonisme in creating culturally charismatic plant ensembles, is essential for rethinking how historic gardens can participate in contemporary biodiversity conservation and environmental policy.
How to cite: Machotka, E.: Japan in Giverny: Cosmopolitan Aesthetics and Species Conflicts in Monet’s Garden , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-308, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-308, 2026.
