Countering the climate and ecological crisis by implementing the energy transition, limiting emissions, promoting decarbonisation, reducing the vulnerability of territories, stopping the loss of biodiversity and, indeed, enriching it through the protection of ecosystems and the restoration of degraded ones.
A commitment summarized in the ten measures of the Charter for “Nature-Positive Cities” signed by Turin and 31 other Italian cities presented during the national conference of Green Cities 2024.
Cities, large, medium and small, generate the majority of greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on natural capital and are also the places increasingly exposed to the consequences of the climate crisis – heat waves and islands, flooding, floods – to environmental degradation and air pollution. In cities, however, citizens’ concern for the environment and the request for more incisive ecological measures are also more present.
The climate crisis does not allow for postponements and cities – which are responsible for 65% of global energy consumption and over 70% of C02 emissions – can truly become protagonists of the green transition. For this reason, in continuity with a path already started and aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (commitments undertaken with adhesion to the European initiative of the Covenant of Mayors), the City has joined the European Mission “Climate-neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 – by and for the Citizens” with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality, i.e. net zero greenhouse gas emissions, by 2030 together with 99 other European cities, and becoming a laboratory for experimentation and innovation that can be a reference for all other municipalities that will have to achieve the same objective by 2050. As part of the Mission, the City has developed and approved the Climate City Contract, a document that defines a real portfolio of measures and actions to achieve the objective to 2030.
Promoted by Green City Network as a tool to support the transition towards green cities, the paper highlights the active role of cities for the restoration of nature and biodiversity in the urban context as a central element in the path towards climate neutrality and in the construction of a city sustainable, where citizens can live, work and move in vibrant and resilient environments.
A transition that will require public-private cooperation in multiple sectors, including real estate, energy, commercial and mobility.
The Charter for Nature-Positive Cities is divided into 10 principles, entirely in line with the policies already carried out by the City:
1. Promote sharing, knowledge and information on the value of natural capital and ecosystem services in cities
2.Restore degraded natural capital
3. Eliminate land consumption
4.Increase natural capital
5.Save the withdrawal and consumption of natural resources
6.Strengthen adaptation measures to heat waves
7.Implement the energy transition
8. Protect water as a scarce natural resource
9.Reduce vulnerability to flooding and floods
10.Implement an action plan for the nature-positive transition
