Tagged with Sustainable cities

Philanthropy’s Role in Creating Sustainable Cities

Philanthropy has an important role to play in creating “time and space” for cities to become sustainable, according to the program director for the sustainable development grantmaking program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Michael Northrop is set to give the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation’s annual Inspiring Philanthropy oration discussing the role of philanthropy in creating sustainable cities.

Northrop, who also serves on New York City’s Sustainability Advisory Board, told Pro Bono News philanthropy had created soft capital that allowed cities to innovate.

Philanthropy creating sustainable cities

Photo: article supplied

“The most important actors in a city are going to be your mayors and your city councils and so on, but I think all of these networks of cities that exist in the world now – and there are a lot of them – were fundamentally all created with donor capital, whether that was private foundation capital or bilateral aid money, money from the EU, things like that,” Northrop said.

“Those different fora became places where cities could meet and talk and think together and share lessons and steal ideas from each other and out of that has come this flourishing of really cool, good, innovative approaches to moving things forward.

“I don’t think philanthropy wants to take credit for any of that but I think philanthropy has created some of the soft capital that has allowed those meetings to happen and those conversations to proceed.”

Northrop, who was previously executive director of Ashoka, said the key to attracting more philanthropic funding into the space was storytelling.

“I think the whole climate change space is perceived to be dominated by environmental green groups, and that’s not actually true,” he said.

“I think a lot of environmental philanthropy, tends to go to environmental green groups but just think about the US, it was probably 20 years ago that people started to see mayors and governors in our context as potentially important incubators of new creative approaches and they began to fund some of these networks and these support services for mayor and governors and it proved to be a different way of spending environmental dollars.

“And I think, if you look back over those two decades, you just see a lot of productivity that came from those dollars and I guess the challenge is trying to get environmental philanthropy to see cities and states and the support networks around them as viable recipients for grant funds rather than just environmental green groups.

“Mike Bloomberg has been huge with the money that he has put into the space, it has really made a difference, and there are others who have been part of that, a big transition in Denmark called Realdania, is a big supporter of that, The Children’s Investment Fund in London, is a big supporter of the C40 Cities that Bloomberg got started, so I think philanthropy will stay engaged, more in the background as support for these cities, to create the time and space for them to innovate and do their good work.”

Northrop said it was about a different way of thinking and creating a social infrastructure to encourage collaboration.

This article was originally published by Probono Australia.

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Green Space – How Much Is Enough, And What’s The Best Way to Deliver It?

Half of the world’s people now live in urban areas. This creates competition for resources and increases pressure on already limited green space.

Many urban areas are still experiencing active degradation or removal of green space. To reverse this trend and ensure the multiple benefits of green space are realised, we urgently need to move toward on-ground action.

However, there is no clear guidance on how to translate the evidence base on green space into action. There is limited information to guide green-space practitioners on how much is “green enough”, or on how to manage and maintain green space. There is also a lack of guidance on how to deliver the multiple benefits of green space with finite resources.

Why we need green spaces

A recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report aims to provide guidance on how to tackle the uncertainties of providing such spaces.

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There is a substantial evidence base to show that green space is good for us. It is associated with many health benefits, both physical and mental – including reductions in illness and deaths, stress and obesity – and a range of positive social, environmental and equity outcomes.

Providing adequate green space within our urban areas is therefore paramount. We need to preserve, enhance and promote existing green spaces and create new spaces.

Various political frameworks underscore the need for these spaces in our cities. For example, the New Urban Agenda calls for an increase in safe, inclusive, accessible, green and quality public spaces. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pledges to:

“… provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular, for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities”.

Moving toward action

The WHO report carried out a systematic review of the published evidence on green-space interventions. The review found a variety of intervention types have strong evidence for delivering a range of health, social and environmental outcomes.

These intervention types range from smaller green spaces, such as street trees and community gardens, to larger, more interlinked spaces, such as parks and greenways. This signals the need to think beyond the traditional urban park when considering how to meet the demand for green space among growing urban populations.

Article originally published by The Conversation.

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