Inspiring Change: New actions for greening cities

Talk Overview
The "Inspiring Change: New Actions for Greening Cities" talk took place at EU Regions Week 2024, showcasing the Greening Cities Partnership’s Action Plan under the Urban Agenda for the EU. Led by Heather Brooks from Eurocities, the presentation underscored the urgency of urban greening and highlighted the partnership's multifaceted approach to supporting cities in advancing green infrastructure. The session attracted a full room of around 50 participants, including representatives from municipalities, national ministries, and various stakeholders.

Key Themes and Areas of Interest
The talk centered on the Partnership's six core Actions, with a focus on innovative methodologies for assessing urban green space needs, developing indicators for Urban Nature Plans (UNPs), policies and regulations to support greening on municipal and privately owned land and exploring funding mechanisms. A graphic overview effectively illustrated the interconnected structure of these Actions.
After the presentation of the Actions of the Greening Cities Action Plan, a short discussion followed in which the participants shared their thoughts mainly on:

- the implementation of Actions in line with the Nature Restauration Regulation

Attendees showed significant interest in:

Action 1: Quantifying urban greening needs based on climate risk assessments, with several municipalities eager to explore tools and evidence-based approaches.
Action 2: Developing indicators for Urban Nature Plans, with potential collaboration opportunities with the Healthy Cities initiative, which is launching a “Healthy Cities Generator” to assess health impacts of urban policies.
Actions 4 and 5: Funding and financial support for urban greening, prompting discussions with national ministries on the challenges of securing sufficient funding for green initiatives.
Stakeholder Engagement and Feedback
The session fostered active dialogue, with participants expressing interest in providing feedback and potential collaboration. Specific feedback included:

Interest in Action 1 and its methodologies for assessing green space needs through climate risk assessments.
Potential collaboration with Action 2 and the Healthy Cities initiative to include health indicators.
Engagement from national ministries on Actions 4 and 5, focusing on funding models to support urban greening efforts and how financial allocations from Member States could be managed.
Queries from participants led to discussions about the ambitiousness of the “no net loss” green space target.
The high level of engagement underscored the relevance and timeliness of the Greening Cities Partnership’s work, especially following the recent adoption of the Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR).

Next Steps and Engagement Opportunities
Following the session, participants were encouraged to stay updated on the partnership's progress through the Urban Agenda for the EU channels and the dedicated Greening Cities page. The Partnership will continue engaging stakeholders at various governance levels to implement and refine its Action Plan, with additional capacity-building sessions planned in collaboration with networks such as EUKN, ICLEI, and JPI Urban Europe.