The Urban Climate Regeneration

As COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow draws to a close and hundreds of political and social leaders from around the globe make their way back to their respective countries, the visceral climate challenges affecting the daily lives of our families and others around the planet are becoming more and more apparent. Nasa found 2020 to be the hottest year on record, and the top ten hottest years have all fallen between 2005 and 2021.

Climate change is here, it is real and it needs urgent action.

By 2050, the UN expects 68% of the global population to be urban. In the UK, the population living in urban areas is already 84%. From pollution to traffic, food, heat islands and energy resources, there are a myriad ways in which urban populations create some of the highest carbon footprints and climate impacts on the planet. In the UK, urban populations extract huge amounts from nature at several steps removed, depending mainly on natural resources imported from the rural UK or distant parts of the world.

To tip the balance of the climate crisis, we need solutions which ensure a more climate resilient future for us all, but there is a particular need for those living in urban areas to act fast and to act effectively.

Each of us can play our part, but many of us need support, ideas, and guidance. Forests without Frontiers is one organisation which is making a tangible difference by doing just that. We are a UK based non-profit organisation, working hard to bring nature back to life and people back to nature, to help create the rapid decarbonisation we need. Our key initiatives involve planting huge numbers of trees, and rewilding and reforesting degraded landscapes with support from a network of local artists and musicians, communities, businesses and individuals working collaboratively. We are now also creating solutions based opportunities to tackle the urban climate issue, and focusing our efforts on cities.

Logo by Studioink

This month we launch our Cities for Earth Campaign – an ambitious campaign which will help urban residents to take positive action in tackling the climate emergency. We have an expert team who are engaging a diverse array of individuals, businesses and group to help balance their carbon footprints and regenerate local environments. Our first project in the City of Brighton and Hove plans to work with local landowners and the Children’s forests group to plant trees and involve the community - as well as continuing to plant at scale in Romania. Creative art installations and integrative events are part of the inventive and acts of reviving nature in the city, big and small, are encouraged. We want people to come together to make a difference.

The aim is for the ‘Regenerative Cities’ model to be replicated across other cities bringing them together to help seed many new local projects and create micro green spaces within cities, whilst also supporting the creation of the largest natural park in Europe.

Brighton and Hove planters outside the Town Hall have been potted sponsored by the Cities for Earth campaign

“Regenerative cities basically means to develop an environmentally
enhancing, restorative relationship between cities and the natural
system whose resources they depend on as well as fostering urban
communities where people benefit from this process.”

— The Beam Magazine