Increase Biodiversity

Peri-Urban Forest Ostend – Belgium

Peri-Urban Forest Ostend – Belgium

The peri-urban forest Ostend in Belgium aims to provide a publicly accessible space for recreation, offering educational facilities for local residents and tourists.

Through the afforestation of previous agricultural land and being part of a Green Ribbon (Groen Lint) network surrounding the city core, the peri-urban green space further aims to enhance biodiversity and ecological connectivity.

The afforestation in the coastal and harbour city was planned as a buffer zone between industrial sites and residential areas.

Danube-Auen National Park - Vienna, Austria

Danube-Auen National Park - Vienna, Austria

The Danube-Auen National Park in Vienna aims to multiple ecosystem services combine with trees with regulating services, such as water protection, retention, carbon sequestration, and micro, local, and regional climate regulation.

The National Park fosters an environment providing habitats and biodiversity for animal and plant species to enhance supporting ecosystem functions.

The National Park’s blue and green infrastructure further aims to provide cultural functions by offering open spaces for recreational value, allowing urban dwellers to find aesthetic pleasure, a sense...

ReDuna - Restoration of S. João da Caparica Sand Dunes

ReDuna aerial view

One of the consequences of global warming is the sea level rise. In urban settings along coastlines, rising seas threaten not only houses, but also several types of infrastructures such as industries,  roads, power plants, freshwater aquifers, etc. Rising sea-level also pushes destructive storm surges further inland, posing very high risks for coastal populations, as storm surges can push water kilometers inland, causing extreme flooding far from the coast. 

The Portuguese ReDuna project aims to restore the natural capacity of the Almada sand dune-beach ecosystem to healthily...

Green Noise Barrier Sachsenheim, Germany

Noise Barrier Sachsenheim © Ralf Groemminger

The noise barrier wall-system being used in Sachsenheim guarantees an instant green noise barrier wall, from the very first day on: The green noise barrier consists of a scaffold with galvanised steel lattice mats on both sides, filled with a core of plant substrates and then planted with pre-cultivated plant mats. Already at the time of assembly, the walls are at least fifty percent covered and they are completely green after six months.

Heritage Colombia (HECO): Resilient landscapes that maximizes contribution to Colombia´s mitigation and adaptation goals

Heritage Colombia (HECO) is a paradigm changing programme, that through a resilient landscapes approach and a long term financial scheme, will strengthen the adaptation and mitigation to climate change of rural Colombia through the, protection and sustainably management of important ecosystems and ecosystem services, reducing deforestation and degradation in the country’s carbon-rich ecosystems. This programme focuses on 9 landscapes and will deliver verifiable climate mitigation and adaptation impacts through

(1) improving land use planning;

(2) reducing vulnerability of...

Protected Areas and Resilient Landscapes – Project Finance for Permanence in Colombia, Perú and Bhutan.

Medellin, Colombia

Managing socio-ecological landscapes as natural carbon sinks and resources for adaptation is increasingly recognized as a necessary, efficient and relatively cost-effective strategy. Protected areas store 15 % of terrestrial carbon and supply ecosystem services for disaster reduction, water supply, food and public health, all of which enable community-based adaptation. Many natural and managed ecosystems can help reduce climate change impacts. But protected areas have advantages over other approaches to natural ecosystem management in terms of legal and governance clarity, capacity and...

PROAmazonia - Utilizing forest conservation and sustainable production practices to address climate change and strengthen local livelihoods in Ecuador

PROAmazonia is an ambitious, five-year collaborative initiative to transform the agriculture and forestry sectors in the Amazon region to more sustainable management and production practices. It is an inclusive, cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder initiative seeking a just transition to sustainable land-use practices to significantly reduce deforestation and restore degraded ecosystems, improve the livelihoods of some of the most impoverished communities in Ecuador, and establish viable economic markets for sustainably produced, deforestation-free products. 

Mangrove restoration in Costa Rica

A pilot mangrove restoration project in Costa Rica demonstrating how mangrove planting can benefit habitat and species conservation, whilst boosting the local economy. About 40% of Costa Rica’s mangroves were deforested following the collapse of the country’s banana boom in the 1980s. A vigorous fern species has taken over much of the deforested area, preventing the mangroves from re-establishing. A pilot restoration project of 30 ha of mangrove in a protected wetland was implemented, involving clearance of the ubiquitous fern, planting of saplings, and continued fern removal for a few...

Alcaldía de Medellín - Green Corridors Initiative

Medellín, like many other cities, faces rising temperatures, worsened by the urban heat island effect—concrete and tarmac absorbing the sun’s power, radiating it out as heat and keeping the city warm long after the sun has gone down. It doesn’t have to be that way, as Colombia’s second-largest city, Medellín, is showing by embracing nature-based solutions.

With the Green Corridor project, which won the 2019 Ashden Award for Cooling by Nature Award, supported by the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program and in partnership with Sustainable Energy for All, Medellín’s city authorities...