Balancing the UN’S SDGs for the environmental vision

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How can we strike the right balance between the many demands on scarce space for living, energy production, health and nature? And how can we do this within a municipality’s environmental vision? The implementation of the Dutch Environment and Planning Act requires municipalities to view the physical environment from an integrated perspective and to describe how the related social policies mesh together. At the request of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG), NextGreen facilitated working sessions with four municipalities in order to co-create a framework for striking the right balance, based on their practical experiences and using the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a compass.

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Three New Pilots on Financial Incentives Alliance to Strengthen Collaboration

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Alliantie financiële prikkels vergroenen belastingen subsidies

Tile collection services, communication and handling trade-offs to achieve a good policy mix are central to the three new pilots involving financial incentives for climate adaptation. The partners are therefore building on the work of the Financial Incentives Alliance for Climate Adaptation.

Citizens and businesses can take measures to make their own environment more climate-proof. For example, through the creation of a green roof or a rainwater reuse system. But what is the best way to encourage citizens and businesses to actually take these steps?

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Online Collaboration for Impact: Our Tips

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Recent months have brought challenges that most of us could never have imagined, but fortunately, NextGreen’s clients can continue to work as usual with the joint sustainable transitions that we are facilitating online. Especially now, it is important that we, as government bodies, companies and financial institutions, work together on a truly inclusive society and a sustainable economy that supports this.

Now that we can no longer brainstorm face to face, we were quick to try out various online working methods. We now feel at home in any combination of Teams, Zoom, Skype, online workshops, webinars, break-out sessions, polls, chats – of course supplemented with e-mail and telephone. We adapt to the tools that our clients and partners prefer to work with, and we are discovering some great new online working methods.

We would like to share a number of online experiences from the processes that we have been facilitating:

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Webinars on ‘Science-Based Targets for Biodiversity’

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Leading companies, financial institutions and scientists have immersed themselves in developing Science-Based Targets for Biodiversity through a series of webinars. At the EU Business & Nature Summit in 2019, participants in the EU Finance and Biodiversity Community decided to further collaborate on the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and nature through their financing and investment activities. At the end of March, the plan was to meet business frontrunners and scientists to discuss ‘Science-Based Targets (SBT) for biodiversity’.

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Productive Dialogue on City Deal for Climate Adaptation

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During the City Deal meeting on February 13th, participants in the City Deal Climate Adaptation had a productive dialogue with a number of key players in the real estate sector and infrastructure & energy networks. Both municipalities and other sectors perform stress tests for climate adaptation, but they do not usually speak to each other. They face the same risks of infrastructure failure, damages and health issues due to increased flooding, heat and drought in urban and rural areas. The participants explored solutions and identified a number of actions around various bottlenecks at the local and national level. NextGreen facilitated this dialogue together with the coordinators of the City Deal.

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Greater impact on Dutch roofs: an ambitious agenda

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NextGreen is developing an action plan for the National Rooftop Plan 2020-2023, together with Stroom and Onderstroom. In the plan, the 45 partner government bodies, companies and knowledge institutions emphasize the importance of a multifunctional design for our rooftop landscape, so that we can achieve more impact than the current emphasis on more solar panels on roofs. Our rooftop landscape can also provide solutions for nature, heat stress, flooding, health and the ever-growing demand for space. Read more

Finance sessions Madrid – EU Business & Nature Summit

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Banks and investors are increasingly playing a role in halting the loss of biodiversity and ‘bending the curve’ towards the recovery of ecosystems. At the EU Business & Nature Summit (EBNS) in Madrid, NextGreen facilitated two finance sessions, including contributions from ASN Bank, CDC Biodiversité, Triodos Bank Spain, OECD, IUCN, UNEP-WCMC, Global Reporting Initiative, ACCA, Trucost-S&P and CREM.

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Factsheets on ensuring climate adaptation in private property

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Private property has a very significant role to play in dealing with our changing climate, from extreme rainfall to extended periods of heat and drought. The effects of this can clearly be seen in our cities. Fortunately, there are various policy options that municipalities and water boards can use to incorporate climate-adaption measures into their policy.
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From deal to program

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During the festive conclusion on the 13th of May, Green Deal Green Roofs presented their results to Delta Commissioner Peter Glas. The forty participating authorities, companies and knowledge organizations celebrated the successes of four years of collaboration. With their ambition for more and better green and blue roofs they listed the measurable effects, mapped out innovations, and wrote the Guide Nature Roofs. They also devoted themselves to financial incentives such as mortgage interest deduction and a more sustainable tax system. NextGreen , together with Stroom en Onderstroom, has guided this collaboration ever since the feasibility phase in 2013.

Presenting of the Legacy document at Nieuwspoort The Hague with, from left to right, Peter Glas (Delta Commissioner), Egbert Roozen (chairman Green Deal Green Roofs and general manager of the trade organization VHG) and Kasper Spaan (secretary Green Deal Green Roofs and advisor Waternet).

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Celebrate Diversity

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‘Celebrate Diversity’, a basic principle for robustness and resilience in nature, has inspired me ever since I got acquainted with the third design principle of Cradle2Cradle during the guidance of the Learning Community C2C in 2010. My current work in the field of biodiversity teaches me about the importance of the diversity of genes and species, and how to reinforce this by connecting areas in order for populations to become more robust due to a bigger gene pool. This ecological principle invites us to celebrate the diversity of perspectives and ideas. Together they make a sustainable transition stronger, as was also confirmed by a recent Workshop Transition perspectives (in Dutch).

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