PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
While the EU and national governments play a key role in driving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, cities are increasingly also recognised as central to the process. Not only do cities contribute to various environmental and climate problems, but they also have the concrete possibility to help avert worrying trends. However, evidence has shown that insufficient progress has been made towards several environmental and climate targets at the city level, including high road noise levels, the decreasing extent of protected areas, exposure to air pollution, etc.
It is beyond doubt that creating sustainable cities requires integrated planning policies and governance across sectors and levels of government. In addition, given the cross-cutting nature of environmental targets, it is crucial to promote synergies and joint actions between public administrations (top-down approach) and citizens (bottom-up approach). Yet, this strategic and holistic approach is difficult to achieve in practice, due to a series of reasons, including:
- Disaggregated vision and management of environmental issues; lack of environmental objectives in municipal planning instruments; and lack of a links between environmental targets and a system of incentives for policy and decision makers.
- Difficulties in managing and sharing large amounts of environmental data collected by different municipal departments.
- Lack of organisational culture inside public administrations and insufficient or ineffective internal dialogue between decision makers / employees and between different departments / offices.
- Difficulties in communicating environmental data in a simple and comprehensive way to policy and decision makers, and citizens.
- Lack of behavioural and bottom-up culture for citizen involvement in the pursuit of public administration environmental targets.
- Similar environmental indicators in different planning instruments both at Italian and European level and multiple procedures for their evaluation.
OBJECTIVES
The general objective of the LIFE HELP project is to test and demonstrate a model for facilitating the shift from highly fragmented municipal planning, managing, and assessing of environmental initiatives, towards a holistic, long-term and integrated vision. The model will be tested in the city of Rimini but is easily replicable at European level.
The specific project objectives are to:
- Re-define the environmental decision making and planning system of the Municipality of Rimini, linking it to a well-defined system of incentives as well as monitoring indicators.
- Deliver direct environmental benefits by signing the Green City Accord, and adhering to ISO 14001 standard certification and EMAS, helping to bring about improved air quality, water quality and efficiency, enhanced urban biodiversity, better municipal waste management, and a significant reduction in noise pollution.
- Develop the WA2NNA-BEST index, to be formally validated at national level in order to, on the one hand, communicate the annual environmental progress achieved by the public administration in a simple manner to the public and policymakers and, on the other hand, rank the municipality’s environmental achievements according to a level of reference derived from national/European statistics and/or the best environmental management practices as per EU Decision 2019/61 (EMAS reference document for public administrations).
- Promote measurable behavioural change and awareness raising initiatives for the general public, by means of offline and digital participation tools.
- Guarantee sustainability and promote the replication of the approach in other cities through the application of the WA2NNA-BEST index, easy to use Guidelines, and a series of tools to be released free of charge (data platform, training tools, procedures for ISO14001 certification, etc.).
- Promote organisational and cultural change in the public administration by ensuring basic competence in all environmental topics and greater involvement in the municipality's planning actions.
RESULTS
The project’s expected results are:
Governance impact:
- A permanent place for environmental governance planning is set up (the Environment Hub);
- 17 Managers and 37 heads of operational units are involved in a new collaborative and holistic decision-making process for environmental planning;
- 32 members of Rimini City Council and 10 members of the executive board are involved in a new collaborative and holistic decision-making process for environmental planning;
- 20 stakeholders participate in the Environment Hub;
- 5 environmental objectives are included in Rimini’s DUP (strategic planning document);
- 5 environmental objectives are included in Rimini’s PIAO (short term operative planning document);
- 32 councillors, 10 members of the board, 16 policy makers and at least 1,000 staff members are trained;
- 18 Internal audit meetings are organised in the framework of ISO14001 certification and EMAS application procedure, with 80 staff members involved;
- 20 utility operators/administrations/offices are involved in open data sharing;
- 9 municipal plans adopt the new approach;
- 6 cities replicate the whole approach and adopt the WA2NNABEST index for communication of environmental data;
- 100 Guideline and dissemination kits are distributed.
Social impact:
- 58 policy/decision makers and 100 citizens participate in the WA2NNABEST index test;
- 1,500 people are involved in surveys;
- 60 people are directly involved in participatory actions;
- 80% of citizens are made aware in a comprehensive way about the environmental improvements achieved by the city via the WA2NNABEST index.
Environmental impact:
- Reduction of GHG emissions by 40,432 Tn of CO2eq/year;
- Reduction of night-time noise levels by 1.5 decibels (dB(A));
- Reduction of water supply network losses by 2%;
- Increased municipal recycling rate from 68.3% to 72%;
- Increased vegetation cover in urban green infrastructure from 6.05% to 9%.
