Trees and urban forestry: how wooded areas improve our cities
Environment — di Sergio Costa
The ongoing pandemic has taught us about the link between pollution and health. Minister Costa's words on urban forestry for a sustainable future.
Trees and urban forestry: how wooded areas improve our cities
The ongoing pandemic has taught us about the link between pollution and health. Minister Costa's words on urban forestry for a sustainable future.
Today we are all perfectly aware of the social, environmental, economic and health benefits that the presence of green space brings to our cities. Investing in green space is an investment in the future, and that is what this government is doing: the Climate Law, passed at the end of 2019, includes a very important provision that I feel particularly attached to, and which I am sure each of you will welcome too: urban forestry. Just a few days ago, I signed the implementing decree on urban forestry, which allocates 30 million euros over two years for tree-planting projects in cities.
Planting trees means protecting the biodiversity of our territories, ensuring the functioning of ecosystems, combating climate change, and improving citizens' health. Trees also absorb CO2, improving air quality, and make a fundamental contribution to climate change mitigation efforts. For all these reasons we wanted to build urban forestry into law.
The Ministry of the Environment will approve detailed management plans providing for the planting, management and maintenance of the green areas created for at least seven years, and for the replacement with new trees in the event that those planted fail to take root.
The journey towards greener cities has therefore begun, not least in the light of Covid-19, which is unfortunately demonstrating just how clear the link between health and the environment in which we live really is. The pandemic has taught us that we cannot go on with the old, environment-hostile ways of life: the future must be sustainable, and municipalities and local communities are the true hubs of the post-Covid green revolution.
L'italia condannata dalla Corte Europea per la qualità dell'#aria nel periodo 2008-2017. Un'eredità che fa male. Continuiamo sulla strada intrapresa: accordi con le #Regioni, #mobilità sostenibile, #riforestazioneurbana ed #EconomiaCircolare.
Every local community now has an additional tool with which to become the architect of a new way of conceiving the world of urbanisation; we have carried out an assessment which tells us that by 2030, more than 60 per cent of the world's population will be living in major cities, and that figure will probably reach 70–80 per cent by 2050. This means that urban life must be understood in a different way.
Forestry means reshaping the landscape of our cities in a naturalistic direction, allowing us to have a relationship more oriented towards naturalism; this need also underpins the incentives for alternative mobility and for the energy efficiency of private buildings. These are all measures through which we also aim to come out of infringement proceedings on air quality in certain parts of Italy, building — in the spirit of the 2030 Agenda as well — a new world that can no longer do without a system of environmental protection.