Amazon have announced that they are committing €3.75 million towards The Nature Conservancy’s Urban Greening program in Germany. This is their first right now Climate Fund project outside of the U.S. and through collaborations with city officials and local community organizations they will help create and implement plans for:
- Reducing flood risk by improving rainwater retention through tree planting, revitalizing urban wetlands, and adapting existing green spaces
- Reducing extreme heat and pollution by leveraging unused public spaces to plant trees and improving urban water bodies
- Increasing urban biodiversity by introducing pollinator-friendly species, climate resilient plants, and urban grasslands
Last month Amazon announced their $10 million commitment to conserve, restore, and support sustainable forestry, wildlife and nature-based solutions across the Appalachian Mountains in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. Now through this Climate Fund project, Amazon are expanding their efforts to other parts of the globe to help reduce and slow the catastrophic effects of Climate change.
“In addition to all our efforts in the fight against COVID-19, we must also maintain our efforts to protect the planet. The Nature Conservancy and its municipal partners will apply a science-based approach to developing a model that can be applied more broadly across German and European cities. As the program progresses, we will measure the impacts to ensure that the actions result in tangible benefits to urban residents, such as more hectares of greened space, greater counts of wild bees and other pollinators, more cubic liters of storm water safely managed, and lower average surface temperatures.”
– Ralf Kleber, vice president and country manager for Amazon Germany
The plan is to roll out a Science-based, municipality-wide, and stakeholder-based approach to urban greening to the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of Berlin before sharing the successes of it out to other European countries. People living in cities are experiencing more extreme weather in recent years and climate solutions like these will help reduce the impact.
“Our research shows that nature can offer cost-effective options for resilience in this changing environment. We believe that cities play an important role to lead on climate action at the local level in the coming decades.”
– Dr. Kerstin Pfliegner, Germany director of The Nature Conservancy
