Greening Cities

Between June 6 and July 31 2024 the Thematic Partnership on Greening Cities initiated a Public Consultation to collect feedback on their Draft Action Plan.

Finalised in April 2024, the Draft Action Plan proposes five key Actions aimed at increasing green infrastructure in EU cities and regions. The partnership addresses critical challenges such as the need for evidence-based planning tools, effective implementation strategies, robust legislative support, adequate funding, and innovative financial instruments. Developed by the Members of the Greening Cities Partnership, the Action Plan supports the implementation of the EU policy agenda on urban greening at the local level to increase urban biodiversity, adapt to climate change, and improve citizens' wellbeing. 

The public consultation invited interested stakeholders, including institutions and authorities, academic and research centers, companies, NGOs, experts, and citizens, to contribute with their knowledge and ideas to further develop and enhance the proposed actions. Since the closing of the consultation period the partnership has worked on integrating the feedback in the Final Action Plan which will be finalised in winter 2024.

Below you can see the Draft Action Plan and the material accompanying it:

• A summary of the draft Action Plan is available to facilitate the consultation process.
  Download the summary of the Draft Action Plan.
   
• The complete draft Action Plan is available for more details.
  Download the Draft Action Plan.
   
• We invite you to consult the embedded Miro-board available below, which nicely illustrates the five Actions proposed in the draft Action Plan.

The Greening Cities Thematic Partnership is focusing on green infrastructure in the urban areas. The Partnership would be of high relevance to the problems and needs of cities of all sizes with regards to biodiversity preservation and adaptation to climate change. The Partnership would be aligned with the objectives of cities to provide higher well-being to citizens through cleaner air, better inclusiveness and a more aesthetic environment. 

In this regard, the objective of the Partnership is to contribute to the development of an implementation framework for green infrastructure at local, regional/national and EU levels, including links/reflections to the provisions of Article no. 8 from the proposal for a Nature Restoration Law, through:  

1.  ensuring knowledge (methodologies, guidelines, indicators) for the deployment of concrete green infrastructure (GI) solutions at city level and national level;  
2. strengthening the integration of green infrastructure (GI) in the urban dimension of upcoming EU policies and in other sectoral policies;  

The Greening Cities Partnership is composed of 29 members, including 10 cities, 2 regions, and 3 national authorities. It was approved in October 2022, started its work in December of the same year, and is expected to implement its work by the end of 2025. To develop its Action Plan, the Partnership used an Ex-Ante Assessment study as a foundation, structured its work under four Working Groups (WGs) focused on Funding, Indicators System, Methodology for quantifying demand for Green Infrastructure and Urban Nature Restoration Plans. All UAEU Partnerships aim to contribute to Better Knowledge, Better Funding, and Better Regulation by applying multilevel and multi-stakeholder cooperation processes at the EU level. 

The proposed subthemes relevant to Greening cities are presented in Table 1, which also gives an overview of the state of play and thematic bottlenecks pertinent to each subtheme and links to EU policy frameworks.

By clicking on the symbol  , in the top left corner, you will be able to see the different layers of this map.