Yerevan /Mediamax/. The Green Yerevan initiative has officially launched with an expert networking event by Planning Impact Foundation NGO.

The event brought together NGOs, policymakers, and businesses to discuss and implement re-vegetation planning for the city and kick-start the Green Initiative for Yerevan. It 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.

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.

Co-founders of Planning Impact Foundation, Gleb Vitkov and Alexandra Katasonova, introduced the brand new Green Yerevan initiative and platform during the event. The initiative aims to engage urban actors in the process of re-vegetating Yerevan with open analytics and alternative greening solutions that will support the city's greening goals.

“We have seen emerge in many capitals across the developed world where civic initiatives undertaking their own data collection on air pollution using very sophisticated drone technology where they able to collect data and verify against the data that is provided by a municipality. 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We need more civic engagement, more initiatives that are of watchdogs essentially functions where we see a lot of very outdated approaches to the replacement and pruning of trees”, - said Irina Ghaplanyan, Senior Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank, Armenia.

Planning Impact Foundation is a not-for-profit private think tank and operator for urban changes and spatial transformations. With 15 years of experience, PIF is a community of professional urban planners who are passionate about finding solutions to improve cities. The co-founders of PIF live in Yerevan and are well-versed in the local features of the city.

Media Partner of the event – Urbanista.