![]() ![]() While green infrastructure is important, it alone is not sufficient for achieving a healthy and green urban environment. In this context, the enhanced focus on solutions in the area of green and blue infrastructure (hereafter referred as ‘green’ infrastructure) offers an effective and efficient approach to address these challenges in cities. Tackling jointly the biodiversity, pollution, resource and climate challenges provides the entry point on how ‘greening cities’ supports ecosystems and builds resilience. Cities generate about 70% of the global GHG emissions, and at the same time, are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change such as more frequent and prolonged heatwaves, droughts, flooding or water scarcity. One in eight of Europeans living in cities are exposed to levels of air pollutants exceeding WHO recommendations. Green urban spaces often lose out in the competition for land as the share of the population living in the EU urban areas continues to rise. Further to climate change, other key drivers of biodiversity loss – changes in land and sea use, overexploitation, pollution, and invasive alien species – are making nature disappear quickly.Įuropean cities are at the forefront of experiencing the impacts of these multiple crises. The climate emergency calls for urgent action to radically cut emissions to stay on track to limit earth’s warming to 1.5☌, and at the same time, to make adaptation to climate change smarter, swifter and more systemic. Pollution affects our health and environment, and scarce resources are wasted in a linear economy. Climate change accelerates the destruction of the natural world through droughts, flooding and wildfires, while the loss and unsustainable use of nature are in turn drivers of climate change. ![]() Europe and the world are facing the intrinsically linked biodiversity, climate, pollution and resource crises. ![]()
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