Towards greener cities: Citizens as drivers for change

Reshaping cities to be greener and more sustainable is one of the more urgent responses needed to combat climate change in Europe and the rest of the world.

Buildings in urban areas account for 50% of emissions and energy consumption. Yet, most European cities lag far behind when it comes to the requirements for retrofitting and the construction of new urban environments to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11) on sustainable cities and communities, the participants heard at Friends of Europe’s Green Week sessions on investing in greener cities and the role of citizens as drivers of change on 23 May 2018.

“The majority of buildings we will need to meet sustainability goals by 2050 have not even been built yet,” noted moderator Dharmendra Kanani, Director of Strategy at Friends of Europe. “There is an urgent need to address this.”

Beyond Europe, population growth in China, India, and Africa has created enormous pressure on cities and urban systems, with many cities in developing countries unprepared for the logistics of keeping up with projected growth in urban populations.

While some countries have sustainability agendas going back 40 years, many have only recently begun legislating sustainable and green approaches to urbanisation. “We are looking at better forms of urbanisation that are greener and more environmentally friendly,” underlined Raf Tuts, Director for Programme Division at UN HABITAT, noting that “a better urban future should also be a greener urban future.”

The main barriers to sustainable and green development are legislation, financing and human behaviour, noted Piero Pelizzaro, Chief Resilience Officer of Milan.

In order to achieve a greener urban future, sustainability agendas need to focus on both national and municipal levels to produce lasting change. National urban policies with green entry points need to integrate planning systems, legislation, and financing systems with broad local capacity for implementation.

Throughout the world, there is an increase of issues in development and environmental problems such as congestion and pollution. Any vision of a sustainable urban future must be decided and shared by cities through cross-national and intercontinental cooperation, noted Katarzyna Nawrot, Assistant Professor at the Poznan University of Economics, author of the ‘Rise of Megacities: Challenges, Opportunities and Unique Characteristics’, and European Young Leader (EYL40).

“Big cities will have much more capacity to address problems in sustainable development if they partner with each other across the world,” she said, adding that “it is essential that citizens be involved in these processes and be drivers for change.”

Connecting citizens with governments and policymakers has become easier in recent years with the advent of new technologies in communication and social media. Even so, these technological advances are struggling to cope with socio-economic divides and the darker elements of human behaviour, such as selfishness, individualism, and tribalism.

Overcoming economic and behavioural barriers means more efforts from local governments to reach out to their constituents and ensure that poor and disenfranchised citizens’ voices are heard.