News for topic Green-governance

Despite the ongoing pandemic, the UBC Sustainable Cities Commission reached several important milestones by the end of 2021. The new UBC Strategy 2022 – 2030 and the UBC Sustainability Action Programme 2022 – 2030 were adopted at the XVI UBC General Conference.

While the EU’s policies over the years have led to significant progress in improving the environment, and in raising standards across the EU Member States, many environmental challenges still prevail. With more than 70% of the EU’s population currently living in urban areas, cities are critical to meeting the EU's environmental objectives and in helping the EU to become a more sustainable region.

CDP’s A List cities in 2021 take bold leadership on environmental action and transparency, despite the continued pressures of tackling the coronavirus pandemic on local and national economies and societies.

The European City Facility initiative allows cities to access the grant of €60,000 to develop an investment concept - an initial step towards a fully-fledged business and financial plan. The third call for applications will be open until 17 December 2021!

The first UBC TALKS after the summer break was organized on 22 September with the topic of "Local work on the Sustainable Development Goals in UBC Cities"

A year has gone by since municipality of Kemi did something different, something that no other Finnish Mainland municipality has done. They got an environmental certificate ISO 14001:2015.

The disclosure period took place from 15 April to 31 July 2019 during which UBC cities were encouraged to submit their city’s climate change-related data as well as examples of actions that are being taken for climate mitigation and adaptation. A report resulted of this disclosure activity that was presented in Kaunas, Lithuania, during the UBC General Conference.

The 10th Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region was organized in the beautiful Polish Baltic Frederic Chopin Philharmonic in Gdansk, Poland, on June 12th to 13th. The theme of this year’s forum was demographic changes along with the circular and shared economy – the discussions were, in other words, timely and important for the development of the BSR!

Union of the Baltic Cities Sustainable Cities Commission has partnered up with the Urban Future Global Conference and was represented at the Green Business Village stand during the latest conference in Oslo, Norway from 22 – 24 May 2019. UBC Sustainable Cities Commission was represented by project coordinator Juha Pulmuranta and project planner Kristiina Paju.

New report on UBC cities’ environmental data disclosure to CDP highlights increased interest in resilience and growing ambition in climate mitigation and adaptation among the cities.

Back in 2016, UBC and CDP agreed upon collaboration between the two organizations with the first cooperation activities taking place in spring 2017. As a result, UBC doubled the number of cities reporting to CDP from 6 to 20. This year, the number of the cities disclosing to CDP grew to 28 in despite of the busiest holiday season.

SmartEnCity Network will be launched through a workshop on June 1, 2016 in Tartu (Estonia). The goal of the network is to help European small and medium-sized cities to become Smart Zero Carbon City forerunners. Please find the agenda and registration information to the workshop and related conference "Smart City for Citizens" below: The SmartEnCity Network launch workshop When: 1 June 2016, at 16:30-19:00