As part of the Green City Initiative, 50 officials from municipalities, public institutions, and other representatives participated in a 6-week workshop to promote the Initiative and its tools among those involved in the urban development of the Greater Metropolitan Area.
Green City (Ciudad Verde) is the result of the joint work led by the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) and the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) with public institutions, municipalities, academia, the private sector, and society in general.
Technical assistance is provided by The German Development Cooperation (GIZ) through the Interurban Biological Corridors – Biodiver_City project.
“We want to strengthen the initiative so that there is a strong participation, a strong commitment in different instances, mainly in municipalities and organized groups on how we can jointly implement this process to achieve cleaner cities, sustainable cities, cities that provide better living conditions for the Costa Rican population,” said Rafael Gutiérrez, Executive Director of SINAC.
In addition to raising awareness about sustainable development, it seeks to be an initiative that is linked to the daily actions of urban development in cities, improving services, enabling biological connectivity, giving nature back the space it needs to thrive, and creating the conditions for greater resilience to climate change.
By identifying vulnerable areas within cities, the project proposes to analyze which ecosystem services are being affected and which nature-based solutions can improve their condition.
“For us, it is a great honor to be part of this training. At GIZ, we develop abilities. We have worked on the Green City initiative and the tools to build the green city we dream of, but that would remain unfinished if we did not manage to train the personnel who can implement it,” said Claus Kruse, Director of the BiodiverCity project of GIZ.
In one of the sessions, participants learned about the efforts already being made by private companies and local communities to implement measures that promote the development of green cities, such as Nature-Based Solutions and urban ecosystem services.
“We learned about many Green City concepts, such as Nature-based Solutions. Today we saw a house office inside San José with green spaces, which was interesting. We also visited other green spaces such as the Spirogyra butterfly farm, where we want to achieve biological connectivity taking advantage of the Interurban Biological Corridor of the Torres River,” commented Sergio Feoli, Forestry Engineer of the National Power and Light Company.
