GAIA (Green Areas Inner-city Agreement) - Bologna

The city of Bologna in Italy developed a public-private partnership scheme 'Green Areas Inner-city Agreement' (GAIA) in 2010 to leverage finance to plant trees in its urban area as a response to droughts, extreme temperatures and water scarcity. Through GAIA, private companies are persuaded to purchase credits to compensate their emission and neutralise their carbon footprint. The credits are then used to finance tree planting. In exchange for the financial contributions, companies receive additional benefits such as carbon audit, workshops on environmental issues and marketing benefits. The scheme was initiated by the City of Bologna and developed as part of an EU-funded project as a result of a cooperation of researchers and various public and private actors in the city. Until 2018, the scheme has raise 281,000 EUR to plant 2320 trees that are foreseen to sequester 6960t of CO2. The scheme has been replicated in a number of other Italian cities and contributes to the climate adaptation objectives of the Bologna Adaptation Plan to increase the number of green spaces in urban areas and promote urban safety in the face of extreme weather events.

Overview

Type of instrument:

Agreement-based or cooperative instrument›Public-private business agreement

Challenges addressed

Soil quality
Drought and fire risk
Heat stress and heat island effect
Landslide risk
Air quality
Other, please specify

Climate mitigation

Consideration of nature-based solutions:

The primary goal of the scheme is to increase the number of trees in the city, to provide climate mitigation and adaptation benefits. The focus of the scheme is on providing necessary cooling during heat waves through evaporation and transpiration, increasing number of areas with shade in the city and reducing groundwater withdrawals. The trees' ability to prevent riverbank erosion and landslides and decrease air pollution is also taken into account. The project included a study through which the shading capacity per tree was assessed and established the potential evapotranspiration values of various tree species to ensure that a decrease of the urban heat island effect could be realised.

Targeted (peri-)urban areas:

Parks and (semi)natural urban green areas

Green areas for water management

Good practice characteristics:

Potential to be replicated / upscaled

Innovative

Policy business case

Governance

Government body/bodies

Initiating body:

Municipality of Bologna

Instrument design:

Details about how the instrument was designed:

The scheme was designed by a number of public and private actors across the city, with the scientific guidelines having been developed by the Institute of Biometeorology of the National Research Council (IBIMET). Impronta Etica, a non-profit organisation that aims to promote sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), helped to develop the public-private partnership model. Unindustria Bologna, an association of entrepreneurs in Bologna, focused on the involvement of enterprises. Finally, Cittalia, a local branch of the National association of Italian cities and municipalities focused on research activities, provided support in the communication and dissemination needs.

Involvement of non-governmental actors:

Public sector institution (e.g. school or hospital)

Private sector, corporate, business

Researchers, university

Type of actor involvement:

Co-planning or co-design of instrument (e.g. boards, advisory role)

Instrument implementation:

Type of involvement:

The scheme targets local businesses who can finance tree planting activities in the city in order to offset their carbon emissions. The businesses participate in the scheme on a voluntary basis. The interested businesses register their interest via an online form, where they can also estimate their carbon emissions. Next the businesses can select the type of partnerships they would like to purchase to neutralize their carbon footprint, starting from a minimal contribution of EUR 200. Companies that participate in GAIA obtain different benefits depending on the type of partnership that they select. In exchange for their investment, businesses receive a free audit to calculate their carbon dioxide offset potential and workshops on the main environmental issues related to their business. In addition, they can obtain various additional (marketing) benefits for their company. . The city of Bologna has developed clear guidelines that detail the different steps that need to be taken in the process and which party is responsible. The city identifies the cost components, approves the Protocol of Agreement, takes the initiative to start the planting works and pays the tree suppliers. The city also commits to providing a monitoring report every 6 months from the start of the partnership. The company needs to initiate the partnership by providing an expression of interest and sending its data to the city. Once the type of partnership is selected, the company is asked to sign the Protocol. With this Protocol the company agrees to buy the trees and finance the first 3 years of maintenance. As part of the GAIA project, a GAIA Management Group, a body that controls the partnership model and procedures for the selection planting of green areas has been set up. This body consists of representatives of 18 local businesses that participate in the scheme.

Type of non-governmental actors involved:

Citizen oversight (e.g. boards, advisory role)

Financing NBS

Targeted actors:

Private: household, real estate developer, business , financial

Financing

Sources of funding:

Corporate investment

Inversión empresarial

Budget:

1 000 000€ - 5 000 000€

Details about instrument financing:

The total budget of the GAIA project, through which the scheme was developed was €1,200,000, out of which €600,000 was provided by the European Union LIFE funding. Until April 2016, 1405 trees were purchased by private companies, representing a total contribution of €281,000. By May 2018, a further 915 trees had been planted.

Monitoring, evaluation and impacts

Is a monitoring framework in place?:

Yes

The GAIA project periodically issued performance reports with information on the areas where the trees have been located, their species, future CO absorption forecasts and the participation of private companies.

Achieved outcomes and impacts:

By May 2018, 2320 trees were planted and 6960t of CO2 were absorbed. This represents the participation of 18 private companies in the scheme. The LIFE project has also resulted in the creation of a technical protocol to evaluate trees' ability to sequester carbon animal air pollutants for 20 tree species as well as a management protocol for identifying legal characteristics for a private public agreement. Moreover, the project designed a carbon toolkit for calculating environmental targets in terms of CO2.

Success factors and lessons learned:

TheGAIA project successfully developed a functional, legally appropriate and financially sound scheme for cooperation between public authorities and private companies. This was possible thanks to the involvement of a wide variety of public and private actors throughout the development process. The project can also serve as a policy business case as it has successfully demonstrated how the city can raise finance for urban greening projects from local businesses interested in compensating their carbon emissions in a voluntary manner. The project has shown replication potential in that the city of Bologna has received interest from other cities in Italy that would like to replicate the project, such as the cities of Bari, Sassari and Cagliari. Two of the participating companies have exported the model to other cities in which they operate for the implementation of local products. Other companies demonstrated an increased awareness of the carbon footprint following their participation in the scheme.

Sources and further information

References

List of references:

ClimateAdapt (2016) GAIA - Green Area Inner-city Agreement to finance tree planting in Bologna. Case studies Database. European Environmental Agency and European Commission. https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/metadata/case-studies/gaia-green-area-inner-city-agreement-to-finance-tree-planting-in-bologna

GAIA - Forestazione Urbana http://www.lifegaia.eu/

European Commission (2021) Green Areas Inner-city Agreement "GAIA". Life Public Database. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/life/publicWebsite/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.dspPage&n_proj_id=3752

World Urbanization Prospects (2018) United Nations population estimates and projections of major Urban Agglomerations (Retrieved on 30.08.2021)

Further documents

Weblinks:

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/life/publicWebsite/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.dspP…

Photos

Proyecto @LIFE GAIA