Sharon Lavigne, one of the six winners of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize, is fighting to protect her community from plastics corporations.
Pollution
A blanket of green is covering Madrid to tackle air pollution and high temperatures
The municipality of Spain’s capital decided to allocate millions of euros to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The city of Madrid will protect itself from summer high temperatures by creating recreational green areas for its inhabitants. The decision was taken by the Mayor, who wanted to give new life to the Spanish city.
New parks, pine trees along the city’s avenues, urban orchards, green roofs, vertical gardens are planned to be built. A green revolution that will make Madrid resilient against climate change. According to a study conducted by Madrid’s Energy Department, the first evidence of climate change are increasingly long periods of high temperatures.
“The European project Ensembles, which analyses various scenarios in Madrid in the next 80 years, shows a 20 per cent increase in the number of abnormally warm days in summer, with an average increase of four degrees Celsius”, reads El Pais.
For this reason, the city chose to prepare to tackle high temperatures with a forward-looking decision with one of the best weapons: public green spaces. “Madrid Mas Natural” is “a plan to increase the number of green areas and promote community orchards”, said Mayor Manuela Carmena. 22 new community orchards and lots will be transformed into public areas.
These green spaces will help mitigate temperatures and bolster humidity in the city: studies estimate that by 2050 there could be a 25% drop in the city’s rainfall and plants will help fighting drought. And that’s not all, new trees and shrubs will help drastically reduce air pollution: Madrid is one of Europe’s most polluted capitals so much so that it has planned to ban diesel cars completely by 2020.
And more importantly this forward-looking plan will hopefully set a good example for other European capitals because nature is a universal solution against the most notable climate events. This is resilience too.
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