The “Talk series – Porto Towards Carbon Neutrality 2030” is an initiative organized by the Porto City Council, comprising 10 information and debate sessions related to the themes of sustainability, decarbonization, and climate transition in the context of cities’ carbon neutrality. The tenth session took place last Thursday, July 19, at the Porto Innovation Hub, with the theme “Nature-based Solutions”.
Pedro Pombeiro, Director of the Department of Environmental Planning and Management of the Porto City Council, was the moderator of the event, which was attended by Nuno Oliveira, CEO & Managing Partner of NBI – Natural Business Intelligence; Cristina Calheiros, Vice President of the National Association of Green Roofs; and José Lameiras, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto.
Each of the speakers was given a chance to speak, followed by a space for debate and clarification with the public present.
“Nature-based solutions are one of the most promising tools to face some challenges. They are expanding all over Europe. Besides allowing the regeneration of ecosystems, these solutions also promote greater adaptation of territories to climate change and also generate revenue,” began Pedro Pombeiro, Director of the Department of Environmental Planning and Management of the Porto City Council.
Cities can be an opportunity instead of a problem
Cristina Calheiros, Vice President of the National Association of Green Roofs, explained in her intervention that, contrary to what is usually thought, cities could be an opportunity and not a problem: “We often only attribute problems to cities and, in fact, there is enormous potential to take advantage of, leading by example, promoting collaboration between entities, companies, associations, and implementing a strategy and a shared vision”.
“On the level of nature-based solutions, we have to base ourselves on the environmental, social, and economic parts, provide resilience of the territories and also promote ecosystem services. We have an enormous wealth of heritage, we have to take advantage of it, take advantage of the existing gray infrastructure and decentralize. Therefore, taking advantage of the existing gray infrastructure and complementing it with green infrastructure,” she continued.
According to the vice president of the ANCV, it is also necessary to support these solutions, so that they work and are truly effective. “There are many mechanisms that can be used and should be considered by each municipality because each one will have its reality and its context, and this is very important to be able to attract companies and people to adopt these solutions,” she mentioned.
Making cities more permeable
In turn, José Lameiras, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, highlighted the importance of making cities more permeable: “First, we should all work towards making cities more permeable. And second, we should all work to promote urban biodiversity, especially at the level of tree planting, because trees are the great factories that fix carbon, they are the ones that remove carbon from the atmosphere and put carbon in the soil,” he began to say.
The professor mentioned the sponge-parks that the city of Porto already has and that have been a “strong contribution to the mitigation of the serious problems of climate change”, as they aim to distribute water over a larger area, namely a network of green spaces of small, medium, and large sizes, “which have the capacity to function as a sponge and infiltrate water into the soil”.
“We have the two parks in Asprela [Quinta de Lamas Park and Central Park of Asprela], which were designed to be the two main sponge parks, but also pioneer parks in a way of doing and designing public space to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. In the first park [Quinta de Lamas Park], between the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Economics, we recovered a water line that was tubed, and the water channel was designed, calculated, and sized to accommodate large volumes of water in torrential situations. The other park [Central Park of Asprela] was entirely designed with a reflection at the level of typography and hydraulic systems so that, in an extreme situation, it accommodates a large volume of water. It is in the Asprela university campus area, a very large and very impermeable area, which causes the water to run off the surface when it rains. So we have here a solution that is designed so that when there is a situation of extreme rain, it is completely submerged in water,” he explained.
The Alameda de Cartes Park, on the other hand, began construction about three weeks ago and was designed to be a large green sponge structure: “It is in the most disadvantaged area, but also the strategic investment area of the city of Porto. Here the idea is also to promote planting strategies in clusters of vegetation, that is, we promote multi-species vegetation cores, where the systemic effect of these plantations is much higher than the same number of trees planted separately or in the classic alignments”.
How to use nature-based solutions in a structured way?
In the last intervention of this session, Nuno Oliveira, CEO & Managing Partner of NBI – Natural Business Intelligence, presented some data from the World Economic Forum Report, which reveals that, in the next two years, the greatest risks to be faced will be related to natural disasters, inability to adapt to climate change, and large-scale incidents. “Biodiversity and ecosystems are not out there, they are with us, in the attitudes we have, in what we eat, in what we wear, and in our mindset,” he affirmed.
On the other hand, the CEO of NBI also explained the importance of focusing on new opportunities and the economy which, “as a science of progress, needs to bring the issue of development, innovation, and non-conformity”: “Clearly, the financial system has understood the economic dimension of nature and is trying to integrate it. Now it is our job to try to make this done in a balanced, logical, and well-integrated way”.
In this regard, the head of NBI highlighted a project they are developing and other ideas for future projects. “We are developing a park that improves every time there is a flood. Floods will make the habitat richer. And the idea is to integrate the entire project of recovering a peripheral center to the urban area to achieve that area is, simultaneously, an area of social importance and at the same time a safeguard of the biodiversity of that region,” he explained.
“Thinking about natural solutions is not to turn nature into a business, but to understand that all areas of business depend on nature. Nature should not be an ideological war. What we have ahead of us to restore nature is an exercise of capitalism,” he concluded.
