How to Make Yerevan Green Again?

Green Yerevan initiative, aimed at involving urban actors in the process of greening the city through open analytics and alternative solutions, has been launched in Yerevan. The initiators of the project are Planning Impact Foundation, a non-profit private think tank and operator on urban change and spatial transformation. Planning Impact Foundation co-founders Gleb Vitkov and Alexandra Katasonova presented the initiative during a panel discussion held on 1 December at Goethe Centrum in Yerevan.

The event was attended by 35 participants offline and more than 60 online from various organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Armenia, The World Bank Group, Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Center for Ecological-Noosphere Studies National (CENS), Ecolur, Ecoparsec, The Foundation to Save Energy, Adwise, and others.

Shushanik Asmaryan, Deputy Director for Science and Head of GIS and Remote Sensing Department at the Center for Ecological-Noosphere Studies NAS RA, opened the discussion on assessing and monitoring urban thermal conditions. Sarhat Petrosyan, the founder of urbanlab, shared the highlights from the recently published report “Green and Sustainable Cities in Armenia and Georgia” by the World Bank. 

Project manager and coordinator of the EU-funded project LIFECOOLCITY, Karolina Bartocha and Alicja Śniadach from MGGP Aero in Poland shared their experience in using the remote-sensing technologies for greenery inventory mapping, and information about an ongoing project for 10000 EU cities that implements this technology. Natalia Burgos, a researcher from the Ecologic Institute in Germany, presented one of the key products from the INTERLACE project: The Urban Governance Atlas. This repository includes 250 policy instruments that support Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and ecosystem restoration, with a focus on urban planning instruments.

“We have noticed many civic groups all over the developed world that have started collecting air pollution data through advanced drone technology. This allows them to collect and cross-verify data with the municipality-provided data. The same approach can be applied to greening. We need more civic engagement, more initiatives that are of watchdogs essentially functions where we see a lot of very outdated approaches to the replacement and pruning of trees.”, — Irina Ghaplanyan, Senior Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank, Armenia said. 
 

Join us on Telegram