A new Climate-Smart Urban Greenery Handbook brings together research-based, easily applicable ways to strengthen the role of urban greenery for the benefit of climate and nature. The handbook is aimed at city decision-makers and planners as well as home gardeners.
Parks, yards, street plantings and urban forests play a significant but still underused role in mitigating climate change. Beyond storing carbon, they cool cities, manage stormwater, increase biodiversity and support people's wellbeing.
Over the course of the multi-year CO-CARBON project, researchers have examined the climate benefits of urban greenery and developed solutions for using it more effectively. Published on 20 May, brings together for the first time key research findings and recommendations on how to strengthen carbon sequestration in urban greenery, and how green infrastructure can be designed, built and maintained with low emissions.
"It's great that research-based knowledge on the carbon sequestration and cooling effects of urban greenery can be put to concrete use for climate and nature goals," says , Professor of Urban Meteorology at the University of Helsinki.
Carbon-wise choices span city planning and home gardens
The handbook's key message is that being carbon-wise is not just a matter of strategy - it plays out just as much in urban planning as it does in individual yards. Cities' carbon-neutrality goals require not only emission cuts but also stronger carbon sinks, and investing in urban greenery is a key means to that end, as well as an investment in a more pleasant living environment.
The handbook presents ways to make more effective use of urban greenery's potential as a cost-efficient, multi-benefit climate solution, and also covers methods for assessing carbon-wise practices.
The handbook was produced as part of the , which involves the University of Helsinki, Aalto University, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Häme University of Applied Sciences and the University of Copenhagen, together with a wide range of cities and companies. The handbook is also available .
