Portal de Murcia

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Murcia presents its candidacy for European Green Capital 2022 at the Climate Summit (09/12/2019)

The proposal highlights different good practices implemented by the City Council as 'MiMurcia', Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, Climate Change Mitigation Strategy, Local Electric Vehicle Strategy, Murcia Rio and the cycle path network

The Councilor for Sustainable Development and Huerta, Antonio Navarro, and the Councilor for Urban Development and Modernization of the Administration, José Guillén, presented this morning at the COP25 Climate Summit, which is being held in Madrid, the candidacy of Murcia to the European Green 2022 Capital Award, European Green Capital Award.

The prize, organized by the European Commission since 2010, is awarded to a city that has a consistent track record reaching high environmental standards, which is committed to continuous and ambitious goals to improve the environment and sustainable development and can act as a role model to inspire other cities and promote best practices in all other European cities.

In the Murcia City Council candidacy for this award, different good practices put in place in the field of Governance, Climate Change, Sustainable Land Use, Sustainable Urban Mobility, Nature and Biodiversity and Water stand out.

Thus, different projects implemented are included such as 'MiMurcia', Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, Climate Change Mitigation Strategy, Local Electric Vehicle Strategy, Murcia Río, the cycle track network, the custody model of the Territory and the Life Enrich project of Aguas de Murcia:

Governance

The 'MiMurcia: Your Smart, Close, Open and Innovative City Council' initiative that seeks to develop a platform to bring the City Council closer to the citizens, personalizing citizen information according to context, location and time.

It is based on four main lines of action:

- The first involves the creation of a unique monitoring center, which integrates solutions such as a Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) and a smartcity platform.

- The second: 'Living Murcia', includes actions to revitalize the city center, such as the improvement of the intermodality of public transport, the reduction of parking time, intelligent parking for people with reduced mobility and intelligent pedestrian crossings.

Also efficient lighting in the center, noise map of the city, intelligent selective waste collection, trade promotion in the center etc.

- In third place is 'Enjoy Murcia', which includes actions focused on the parks and gardens of the city: irrigation automation systems, efficient lighting, surveillance and security, improvement of the municipal wireless network and monitoring of environmental conditions.

- The last axis 'MiMurcia', aims to provide solutions to citizens, through four strategic areas: communicates, open, resolves and sustainable.

Climate change: adaptation and mitigation:

- The "Climate Change Adaptation Strategy" approved in June 2018, seeks to make Murcia a model of resilience to climate change, thanks to territorial development and public management that brings adaptation to the whole society.

Four strategic objectives: governance, society, research and technology and good practices in urban and rural ecology, organized into 11 goals, 25 lines of action, and 61 measures that affect most of the Municipal Services.

- The "Climate Change Mitigation Strategy", approved in March 2019, develops framed actions for the reduction of atmospheric emissions integrated within lines of action aimed at specific sectors, concretized in projects where monitoring and evaluation is possible of the achievements.

Objective: reduce 40% of CO2 emissions compared to the base year 2007.

- The "Local Electric Vehicle Strategy" approved in 2017 intends to consolidate a new mobility model for Murcia based on new clean, sustainable and very low environmental impact means of transport, where active transport (walking, cycling), transportation public and electric vehicle are the protagonists.

Fruit of a participatory and open process.

It includes 50 measures to favor the development of electric mobility in the municipality of Murcia in the 2017-2019 period, distributed in 5 main areas of action.

Sustainable land use

Murcia Río: action that affects the entire riverbed and the surroundings of the Segura River, in the section that runs within the municipality of Murcia.

Sustainable urban mobility

Parallel to the work carried out by the City Council to design and build a whole network of functional bike lanes within the urban area, a second project has been carried out for the creation of new routes (bike-foot), as well as the consolidation of some preexisting, with a playful or leisure nature, that run throughout the valley of the Huerta de Murcia, also joining the districts with the town center and its cycling network.

In addition to this work of new cyclable routes, different projects for the recovery of greenways are developed around the layout of channels of the historical irrigation network that were buried, and which are now recovered for contemplation and enjoyment.

Nature and biodiversity

The custody of the territory is a tool of sustainable management of the environment.

Murcia has been developing this territory management model in its forest parks for more than a decade.

Among them, the Los Ginovinos municipal estate and the Los Porches estate stand out, both in Red Natura 2000 territory. Through a collaboration agreement, the City Council subsidizes those local non-governmental organizations that request maintenance and environmental dissemination tasks and activities on said farms. , directing efforts to maintain the typical agroforestry landscape of the area, which includes spaces dominated by pine forests and thickets, as well as dryland cultivation areas.

This mosaic of environments is essential for the maintenance of wild birds that live in the environment, mainly raptors such as eagle owl, partridge eagle, etc.

Water

Since 2017, Aguas de Murcia is developing the LIFE ENRICH project.

The objective is to contribute to the circular economy through the recovery of nutrients from wastewater treatment plants and their valorization in agriculture (either for direct use in crops or through the fertilizer industry).

This value chain will be addressed through the development of a new treatment train that will be designed, built and operated in an urban WWTP

The selection of a city awarded the title of European Green Capital is evaluated on the basis of twelve environmental indicators:

1. Climate change: mitigation

2. Climate change: adaptation

3. Sustainable Urban Mobility

4. Sustainable land use

5. Nature and biodiversity

6. Air quality

7. Noise

8. Waste

9. Water

10. Green Growth and Eco-innovation

11. Energy efficiency

12. Governance

The Councilor for Sustainable Development and Huerta, Antonio Navarro Corchón, explained that "being a European Green Capital provides many benefits, such as increasing tourism, increasing the international profile, networks and new alliances, new jobs, greater emphasis on environmental projects through of sponsorships and grants and improvement of culture and the arts. "

The first European Green Capital title was awarded in 2010 and so far, 12 cities have received that title.

The European green capitals to date are:

2010: Stockholm

2011: Hamburg

2012: Victoria-Gasteiz

2013: Nantes

2014: Copenhagen

2015: Bristol

2016: Ljubljana

2017: Essen

2018: Nijmegen

2019: Oslo