SoGreen Alliance proposes European urban green policy recommendations

On 21 March 2024, the SoGreen Alliance published a paper titled 'We want to pass on a liveable and greener world to our children and next generations'.  
 
The SoGreen alliance is a group of eight European Associations within the urban green profession. Along with other industry organisations, they are pursuing for an advanced EU Green Deal 2.0 with a specific urban chapter. The alliance is taking a proactive role in realising a green and healthy urban environment.  
 
The EU Green Deal was launched by the European Commission in 2019 and has set ambitions to become a climate-neutral continent by 2050. The EU Green Deal has demonstrated how SoGreen and other industry associations reinforce their contribution to societal challenges and what it means for the development of professionals in the sector.  
 
The SoGreen alliance sees interesting opportunities and is in the process of providing recommendations in the following areas:

EU Green Deal 2.0 

The SoGreen alliance has welcomed parts of the Green Deal like The Climate Law The EU Taxonomy, and The Skills Agenda. 

The Nature Restoration Law includes the aim for greening of urban areas, and the SoGreen alliance sees this as a starting point to work further in the definition of concrete actions on a national, regional, and local level.

The SoGreen alliance will be pursuing to evaluate the status of sustainable urban areas to eventually include a chapter for the built-up and urban areas in the follow-up of the EU Green Deal. Additionally, they will be pursuing to elaborate further on the aspect of circularity, so that green waste becomes a natural source for new products and applications.

Green transformation at the local level

The SoGreen alliance has high esteem for the role of municipalities in defining and implementing green policies and want to seek for opportunities to support at a local level. They also welcome the EU-Missions on ‘Adaptation to Climate Change’ and ‘100 climate neutral and smart cities’. The alliance will be pleading for a larger involvement of professionals in natural greening as a stakeholder on European and local level in these missions.  
 

The built-up area as a carbon sink

The SoGreen alliance suggests that more could be done to consider how we can reach a balance, or even have a surplus, on the absorption of CO2 in built-up areas. They want to see further elaboration on this concept with the new European Commission, determine finance options and who should be involved in delving further into this topic.

Biodiversity

The SoGreen alliance will cooperate with the European Commission on a specific approach to nature and biodiversity in urban areas. The alliance hopes to help to increase initiatives on nature-inclusive development in built-up levels with better alignment to EU-facilitated platforms where knowledge and best practices can be shared.

Skills Development 

The SoGreen alliance works in coalitions funded by EU projects to develop EQF-levels and vocational training networks. They will be focusing their attention on workers on EQF-level 1 and level 2. The alliance pleads for further support from the European Commission to work on vocational training and the facilitation of working places at organisations.  

The Association recognises and welcomes this hard work from the SoGreen alliance. If members would like to find out more, their publishing can be found at onthegreenmove.com. Alternatively, any questions can be sent to sogreen@onthegreenmove.com.