London secures £2m of funding for urban street trees

benjamin davies Oja2ty 9ZLM unsplash Citygreen
The View from The Shard, London, United Kingdom

In exciting news, London has been granted over £2m of funding by the Forestry Commission from the Government’s Urban Tree Challenge Fund to plant over 7000 street trees across the capital. The funding was secured in collaboration with London boroughs, who will plant and maintain the new trees across 20 boroughs.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has matched funding from the Forestry Commission with over £1m from the Mayor’s Greener City Fund. This is alongside £280,000 from the Royal Docks Enterprise Zone, and £1m from participating boroughs. As a result of the funding, 2,898 trees will be planted in London by end of March 2020 and a further 4,040 trees will be planted next winter.

London’s trees are estimated to provide at least £133m of benefits to Londoners every year. They help improve air quality by removing 2,241 tonnes of pollution annually.

Mayor Khan said, “I’m doing everything in my power to make London zero-carbon and one of the greenest, most sustainable cities in the world. London’s trees are the lungs of our city and they can make a real difference improving quality of life in local neighbourhoods. Simple steps like planting trees help us address the climate and ecological crisis. These additional street trees and improvements to green spaces are targeted in areas where they’re most needed. As the world’s first National Park City, we will continue our bold action to preserve and increase tree coverage across London.”

Source: https://www.prolandscapermagazine.com/mayor-of-london-announces-thousands-of-new-street-trees-across-london/

202020 Vision Launches National Plan to Reach its Goal

202020 Vision Launches National Plan to Reach its Goal:

The 202020 Vision, an initiative of the Nursery & Garden Industry of Australia (NGIA), was named after its mission: “To create 20% more green space in our urban areas by 2020.”

Launched in 2013, the initiative has worked tirelessly to collate the knowledge of, “500 greening experts from across business, government, academia and the community sector consulted during the initiative’s Growing The Seeds tour into a document that showcases proven, scalable and replicable solutions to greening the urban landscape.” This document was officially launched last month as The 202020 Plan.

Dr Anthony Kachenko, Research and Development Team Leader and Portfolio Manager at Horticulture Innovation Australia said, “The 202020 Plan shows if you get industry and government leaders together to share their collective wisdom they can create simple, impactful pathways to reversing the urban greening crisis – it truly is collaborative impact at its best. Through the plan we now have the start of a compendium of urban greening strategies that is a must-read for every business, level of government and community group in Australia that is playing a role to see our cities become healthy, productive, thriving places that can mitigate the effects of climate change.”

The City of Melbourne’s Urban Forest Strategy is one of the initiative’s most successful projects, and will see the council increase canopy cover from 22 per cent to 40 per cent by 2040. Next on the agenda is a “White Label Urban Forest Strategy” for other local governments, providing a template enabling them to replicate The City of Melbourne’s success.

Collectively, governments, business, and planners are beginning to understand the need to green urban environments. The 202020 Vision, “Australia’s biggest network of green space experts, creators and supporters…is uniquely placed to pioneer a more efficient approach.”

The 202020 Plan is available for download here.

Universities Unite to Promote Industry

The urban forestry profession is getting more recognition in the United States, with three universities banding together to advance the profession.

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