Green Infrastructure: Engaging Regions, Cities and Civil Society

On Monday, 4^th November 2013 in the Committee of the Regions’ headquarters, a conference devoted to green infrastructure took place. The event was co-organised by the Committee of the Regions (CoR), the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in association with the European Commission, DG Environment. The first panel entitled “Europe facilitating the deployment of green infrastructures”, featured speeches delivered by Janez Potočnik (European Commissioner for the Environment), Annabelle Jaeger (CoR rapporteur on Green Infrastructure), Adalbert Kienle (EESC rapporteur on Green Infrastructure, German Farmers’ Association) and Sandrine Bélier (MEP). The speakers tackled issues related to protecting biodiversity, improving the knowledge of green infrastructure, and stopping the environment degradation, simultaneously highlighting the need for defining guidelines and the importance of the green infrastructure and its long term benefits. The second session, “Getting green infrastructure on the ground”, featured five presentations – “Promoting green infrastructure in Estonia”, “Green infrastructure in the region of Valencia – from registration to implementation”, “Developing urban green infrastructure”, “Stakeholder involvement as pre-condition for success” and “Towards TEN-G for European Green Infrastructure: the Green Belt Initiative”. Both panels were followed by the debates, which allowed for elaborating and discussing selected issues further. The event concluded in agreeing that there is an urgent need to put the discussed concepts into practice and to spread the message, convincing the society how important it is to engage into implementing green infrastructure.

More information here.