Provision of labour

The Orbital Forest of Tirana is an innovative urban forest that as a green belt forms a natural growth boundary for the City. Tirana has experienced rapid development in the past decades that led to population growth challenging municipal services and infrastructure, while climate change also posed extensive pressures to the urban area with intense flooding, precipitation, urban heat and degrading environment (1, 4). The Orbital Forest is a ring on the periphery of the City that connects 14,000 ha of Tirana’s parks, agricultural fields, and forests, maintaining the ecosystem and supporting biodiversity. (3, 4) The NBS aims to increase urban greenery through the plantation of 2 million trees that fit well to the existing ecosystem while also creating a natural boundary to halt urban sprawl (1,4,5). The afforestation of the Orbital Forest has been done through the “Donate a Tree For Tirana” campaign started in 2017 where citizens, businesses and international organisations can plant a tree adding to the green belt. As of 2021, more than 440,700 trees in the framework of the "Donate a Tree" campaign are also bringing urban nature closer to residents (3).

Climate change has become the day-to-day struggle for this nation - an island nation that faces serious sea-level rise implications should the problem remain uncurbed. The impacts seen are related to rising temperature, sea-level rise (coastal erosion), and changes in rainfall (flooding). To reduce the vulnerability of the population of two regions next to its capital (Victoria), the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Seychelles initiated in 2012 a project aiming at improving the quality of life for the people of Seychelles and restore coastal zones as well as the ecological habitat related to them through nature-based solutions. The project will reduce these vulnerabilities by spearheading ecosystem-based adaptation as climate change risk management—restoring ecosystem functionality, and enhancing ecosystem resilience and sustainable watershed and coastal processes, in order to secure critical water provisioning and flood attenuation. (1)

Mauritius is a biodiversity hotspot, which has been declared by IUCN as a “Centre of Plant Diversity”. 39% of plants, 80% of non-marine birds, 80% of reptiles, and 40% of bat species on the islands are reported as endemic. (4) Nevertheless, human activity keeps threatening this endemicity in Port Louis, a port city and the capital of Mauritius. The city is surrounded by a semicircle of mountains on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other. In 2006 a local NGO started implementing an initiative that focused on restoring native vegetation to the hill that harbours the capital and it's also the place of an important historical heritage, the Fort Adelaide. (2)

The Gangxia 1980 green roof, a pilot of the Green Cloud project, was launched by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in collaboration with key partners, including: Zhubo-AAO; Glocal Estate Management; and Urban Planning & Design Institute of Shenzhen (UPDIS) [1]. Located on an old building in Gangxia village in Shenzhen, the project utilizes three-dimensional light steel structures that are simple to construct and have the capacity to hold over 420 plant containers, filled with plants mostly native to Southern China [1, 2]. The original concrete rooftop is transformed by vegetation, which is capable of absorbing and preserving rainwater, creating a nature-based stormwater management system for the residential building, achieving a 65% of run-off control rate [1, 2]. As a result, a living “green cloud” is formed on a rooftop of Gangxia village, showcasing “a model to improve the urban village’s stormwater management system and its living environment” [1. p.33].

In 2014, a rooftop farming project was initiated in the informal settlements of the Greater Cairo Region to address challenges brought by climate change and to empower the local community. The project was initiated by the German Corporation for International Cooperation and a local NGO with the objective to "reduce ambient temperatures (microclimate) in a densely populated area through green spaces on rooftops, and reduce the impacts of the urban heat island effect and increasing heat." (1) The initiative also addressed four of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets by tackling biodiversity loss, encouraging sustainable agriculture practices, fostering ecosystem services and developing local knowledge (1,11)
Besides environmental benefits, the project and its scaled-up project in 2017 brought several socio-economic benefits by reducing vulnerability to food price changes and by developing the local community. Rooftop Farming Hubs were also established to foster the training and knowledge sharing of rooftop farmers in Cairo (1).

The redevelopment of the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park (Singapore) saw the naturalisation of the previously channelised Kallang River, as well as the installation of wetland cells as water cleansing biotopes and creation of butterfly habitats (Ref. 1).

The Kallang River was previously confined to a concrete canal that ran to the southern edges of Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park (Ref. 1). The channel segregated the two residential areas situated on either side of the park, with the river's 2.7km continuous concrete channel being crossable at only certain defined points (Ref. 3). Following its naturalisation, culminating in 2012, the now 3.2km meandering river is considered the park's highlight, "merg[ing] seamlessly with the park's greenery" (Refs. 1 & 6), and creating a "blue-green recreational network which is well-integrated with nearby residential areas" (Ref. 2).

In 2019 at the Gullele Botanical Garden in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian government launched a historic tree planting campaign. Over 350 million trees were planted in an ambitious move to counter the effects of deforestation and climate change. The Gullele Botanical Garden was selected as one of the 1000 sites all over the country involved in the Green Legacy Initiative, a national campaign against the effects of climate change. The United Nations estimates that Ethiopia’s forest coverage has declined drastically to a low of just 4 per cent in the 2000s from 35 per cent a century earlier. (1,2) The Botanical Garden was not selected aleatory as it is Ethiopia's only botanical garden and it is a nursery for various indigenous plant species. Its mission is to conserve and promote the Ethiopian diverse plants and tree population and it is a conservation initiative located at the northwestern tip of the Addis Ababa City Administration. The site covers an area of 1000 ha which is representative of the central plateau of Ethiopia. (3)

This intervention was initiated in 2014 in Agege, a slum and a city in itself belonging to Lagos. Agege is one of the 7th most populated low-income communities in Lagos with a total population of around 1,033,064 people. Climate change in Nigeria led to seasonal droughts and floods, causing pressures in terms of food security as well as high temperature and humidity levels which affect directly the economically disadvantaged population in the slums of Lagos. In 2014 a research team at the University of Cardiff alongside community leaders of a Yoruba community in Agege implemented a study on vertical gardens in residential areas with the purpose of alleviating local temperatures and enhancing biodiversity. The implementation started with a study and was continued with the introduction of practical gardens maintained by the local community of 3 residential buildings (one in Suru Street, another in Lagos Street in Agege, and a third in Abeokuta Street). (1,2,3,4)

In anticipation of the organisation of the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, the Sidi Mohammed Benabdellah University (USMBA) of Fez has launched an operation to plant 1,000 trees of different species. This intervention was part of a series of scientific, cultural, artistic, sporting and environmental actions undertaken by the University for the Climate, with the cooperation of other partners. Students and faculty as well as NGO representatives were present and implemented the action which ultimately led to the creation of green areas within the campus and around the faculties and universities. Founded in 1975, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University is named for a 18th century Sultan of Morocco, the nation in which the university is based. The main campus is located in the northern city of Fez, a World Heritage Site and historically the last stop on the famous gold trading route from Timbuktu. (1)

In November 2019 the municipality of Hammam Sousse alongside one of the local schools initiated a climate intervention by planting trees next to the banks of the river Oued El Hammam. The municipality of Hammam Sousse is located in the central-eastern part of Tunisia (Sahel region), and as a coastal city, it enjoys a warm Mediterranean climate with a dry summer. The Mediterranean region is ranked among the regions which are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the intervention focused on implementing solutions to mitigate these effects. (1,2)