AIPH World Green City Awards 2022 entries now open

By Gabrielle Stannus
 

The International Association of Horticultural Producers’ (AIPH) World Green City Awards recognise the role of city authorities in promoting and supporting greater inclusion of nature and plants in urban environments. The awards bring global recognition to the value of plants in providing solutions for common city problems and create an enabling environment to shape and nurture a strategic shift in city governance/planning.

The AIPH Green City Initiative promotes awareness of the urgent need for urban greening. The AIPH World Green City Awards are designed to champion nature-oriented solutions that harvest the power of plants and associated ecosystem services to help address the major challenges facing cities today. Specifically, they reward strategic initiatives that are bold, pursue a meaningful impact, are being successfully implemented, have potential to further scale or spread to other cities, and exemplify resilience.

Dr Tim Beatley, Founder and Executive Director of Biophilic Cities shares the enthusiasm of AIPH. “I am excited that for the first time there will be a global award that shines a light on those most exemplary green cities, and I am certain this award will help to inspire and guide innovation and commitments to nature in many cities around the globe.” The Biophilic Cities network is comprised of cities from around the globe dedicated to improving the connection between residents and urban nature. “We believe this award will play an important role in accelerating the global biophilic and green cities movement”, adds Tim.

Greenlife Industry Australia’s (GIA) is a member of the AIPH, and GIA CEO Peter Vaughan sits on the Green City Awards committee. Peter indicated that “he was honoured to be selected to participate on the Awards Committee and a recognition and acknowledgement of the importance that Australian towns and cities place on greener spaces being better places”.

Entries are invited from all city¹ authorities around the world that use ‘Living Green’ in their plans for transformation and can be in collaboration with a delivery authority such as a utility provider or community organisation.

Award categories

Awards are offered in six categories, with a winner in each category and with one overall AIPH World Green City winner.

For each submission to the awards, applicants will be asked to nominate up to two of the most relevant award categories they would like their entry to be considered for. The six award categories are:

• Health and wellbeing: Addressing the medical, behavioural, and social determinants of health for residents.
• Climate change: Tackling the root causes and effects of climate change in order to build more liveable and resilient cities.
• Economic recovery and inclusive growth: Creating systems and solutions that allow all city residents to overcome economic distress and thrive.
• Biodiversity: Addressing the loss of species, habitats, ecosystem health, and genetic diversity.
• Water: Ensuring water resources are safeguarded and wisely used, with clean water available to all while also protecting residents from flooding risks.
• Social cohesion: Fostering belonging, trust and inter-generational as well as cross- cultural relationships to prevent exclusion, marginalisation and violence.

Evaluation

Award entries will be assessed based on five evaluation criteria:

• Vision: The initiative should be bold and include a fresh new model for using and/or delivering nature-orientated solution(s).
• Significance: The initiative should be designed to address a serious local problem or set of problems.
• Implementation: The initiative should have achieved or be well on its way to achieving its stated objective(s) and/or desirable outcomes.
• Learning and Transferability: The initiative should have generated some learning content or mechanisms that enable enhanced local practice in the future and/or offer potential for customised replication in other cities.
• Resilience: The initiative should be mindful of its impact on the planet and of its ability to be sustained over time.

Cities submitting an entry will be provided with detailed application guidelines that describe further the evaluation process and the way in which entries will be scored against each of the five judging criteria.

Entry is free of charge and easily done online. Cities can create a profile and prepare their entry over time, with a final submission deadline of 14 March 2022.

Footnote:
1. The AIPH is using the World Bank’s definition of a city, i.e.: Cities which have a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants in contiguous dense grid cells (>1,500 inhabitants per km²).