Every year a European city receives the European Green Capital Award based on her environmental achievements. This year the winner was Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia, taking over from the previous year’s winner Bristol.
European Green Capital Award has a place within the European Environment Agency and Bureau together with ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) and Covenant of Mayors. The award, which has been given since 2010, encourages other European cities by highlighting environment friendly smart cities that have achieved a higher life quality and that develop innovative, creative solutions, applications for urban life. Cities of member states of the EU or candidate countries can apply for this award.
The jury which consists of experts in their fields evaluates the applications based on 12 criteria, these being Mitigation and Adaptation for Climate Change; Urban Transport; Green Urban Areas; Sustainable Use of Land and Soil; Air Quality; Nature and Biodiversity; Acoustic Environment Quality; Waste Management; Water Management; Purification of Waste-water; Eco-creativity and Sustainable Employment; Energy Performance and Integrated Environmental Management. In addition to the level reached in these, cities that have found “progressive and creative solutions for environmental issues”, that show “high standards in sustainable urban development”, and most important of all cities that “listen to what their citizens want”are awarded.
Qualitative Development Goal
Cities that have been awarded up this year are Stockholm, Hamburg, Victoria-Gazteis, Nantes, Kopenhagen, Bristol, and Ljubljana. Essen has been elected as the city that will take over the award from Ljubljana in 2017. Among the cities that applied for the award for 2017 are Bursa and İstanbul. However, when we look at the elected cities, we see that the award is given to small and medium sized, self-sufficient cities with qualitative development goals, rather than large ones that are growing rapidly and have problems like over-population, emigration, settlement, and globalization goals.
Ljubljana, competing with Oslo, Nijmegen, Umea, and Essen apparently impressed the jury with the major transformation in developing a sustainable urban living in a ten-year period. The city does not lack green areas, in fact it is just the opposite! 46% of the land is covered with natural forests and the green area per person is 542 sq.m. In spite of this, 2000 new trees have been planted; the banks of River Sava, old industrial areas and spoiled fields were greened, new parks opened. The tranformation shows itself mainly in urban transportation, waste reduction and management.
