AFP

From lettuces farmed on New York’s skyline to thick corridors of trees occupying once desolate Colombian roadsides, green initiatives are running wild in cities around the world.

At a time when coronavirus lockdowns have amplified the need for nature in urban areas, AFP has gathered images and footage of projects optimising precious city space.

Replanting initiatives have sprouted up since the start of the 21st century as urban development goals have shifted and alarm about global warming has grown.

And they’ve had an impact.

In nine cities in the world, thanks to planting schemes on walls and roofs, the temperature during the warmest month in so-called street canyons — flanked by high-rise buildings on either side — can be reduced by 3.6 to 11.3 degrees Celsius at the hottest time of day, according to a report by the French Agency for Ecological Transition.

Green spaces have also been shown to improve health and wellbeing, including by reducing stress, anxiety and depression, improving attention and focus, better physical health and managing post-traumatic stress disorder, said Stephanie Merchant of Bath University’s department for health.

“However, it’s about where they are created in relation to the needs of the local communities,” she added.

So, are all urban replanting projects worthwhile?

For a scheme to be seen as “virtuous”, it must fulfil as many functions as possible, economist and urban planner Jean Haentjens, who co-authored the book “Eco-urbanisme” (“Eco-Urbanism”), told AFP.

In addition to lowering the temperature, he said it should also preserve biodiversity, improve wellbeing, raise awareness, be appealing to residents and suitable for its social context.

– Singapore’s otherworldly garden –

The imposing “forest” of giant manmade trees constructed from reinforced concrete and steel, luxuriantly covered in real flora and fauna, is a Singapore landmark.

Towering 25 to 50 metres (82 to 164 feet) over the city-state’s new business district, the 18 solar-powered supertrees light up the night sky, their canopies looking like flying saucers.

Vast glass greenhouses also showcase exotic plants from five continents, as well as plant life from tropical highlands up to 2,000 metres above sea level, complete with an artificial mountain and indoor waterfall.

The Gardens by the Bay project, awarded the World Building of the Year in 2012, says the idea was to create “a city in a garden”.

But pointing to the construction and maintenance costs, Philippe Simay, a philosopher on cities and architecture, called it a “disneyisation” of nature. “Why make trees from concrete when you can have real ones?” he asked.

It’s a great public relations effort, says Claire Doussard, a teacher in planning and development and a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, highlighting its “technical know-how” and awareness-raising among the public about the threat of climate change.

– Farming on a New York rooftop –

With buildings all around, the Statue of Liberty in the distance and heavy traffic below, the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm grows more than 45 tonnes of organic produce a year.

It was launched about a decade ago by friends living in New York who wanted “a small sustainable farm that operated as a business”, co-founder Gwen Schantz said.

In a built-up city, Simay noted, it had been found that such initiatives were “fighting effectively against heat islands” where heat-conducting concrete and asphalt make cities warmer than their surroundings.

Now covering three rooftops, totalling more than 22,000 square metres (more than 236,000 square feet), the farm cultivates a wide variety of vegetables.

But it has to limit the soil depth to about 30 centimetres (12 inches) and “irrigate the soil a little more frequently, because it dries out very quickly”, Schantz said.

Doussard said that the logistics of rooftop farming, where water and soil must be hauled up and produce brought down, means: “These farms must be profitable because there are a lot of constraints.” 

– From living in Milan’s vertical forest… –

By adorning two high-rise apartment buildings from top to bottom in more than 20,000 trees and plants, Italian architect Stefano Boeri said he’d wanted to make trees “an essential component of architecture” and create something that could “contribute to reducing pollution”.

The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) in the heart of Milan sees cherry, apple and olive trees spilling over balconies alongside beeches and larches, selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference for sunlight or humidity.

The award-winning project opened in 2014 and, said Simay, is “an indisputable technical feat with an ecosystem function, a large diversity of trees, plants, insects”.

But, he added, concrete and steel were required to support it all, while setting it up was costly and energy-consuming.

And the price that the luxury apartments go for is also often a talking point.  

– … to vertical farming in Copenhagen –

Bathed in purple light, produce like lettuce, herbs and kale sprout in layered racks from floor to ceiling inside a massive warehouse in a Copenhagen industrial zone.

Little robots deliver trays of seeds from aisle to aisle at the vertical farm, opened by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest in December.

Produce will be harvested 15 times a year despite never seeing soil or daylight — 20,000 specialised LED lightbulbs keep it illuminated around the clock.

The need for constant lighting is one of the downsides for Simay, who also highlighted its overall costs.

But Nordic Harvest founder and chief executive Anders Riemann stresses the benefits of produce being grown close to consumers, freeing up agricultural land that can be turned back into forest.

For Haentjens, it represents “an interesting route”, depending on the context. “But we can’t make it the model of tomorrow,” he said.

– Riyadh’s mass tree planting –  

Today any greenery in Riyadh is almost lost in between the multi-lane highways and gigantic interchanges, but within nine years the city plans to have added 7.5 million trees.

The reforestation is part of an $11-billion green initiative that also includes creating 3,000 parks in the Saudi capital.

It will require one million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of water daily, which will be recycled water from an irrigation network, the Riyadh Green website says.

But it will contribute towards reducing normal temperatures by one or two degrees Celsius and improve the quality of life with less air pollution and dust, according to project head Abdelaziz al Moqbel.

“Reintroducing trees in the desert is very virtuous, you gain in terms of cooling,” architect and urban planner Cedissia About said.

But, she added, the big question would be whether phytosanitary products, which scare off birds and insects, are used when the aim is to boost biodiversity.

– Medellin’s ‘green corridors’ – 

Colombia’s second-biggest city has won plaudits and awards for its “green corridors”, an interconnected network that has transformed urban thoroughfares once lacking in nature and strewn with rubbish where drug addicts gathered.

Now the 30 tree- and flower-filled corridors connect up with Medellin’s existing green spaces such as parks and gardens.

“There’s been a real reflection citywide on the species chosen, the habitability, the constraints,” Doussard said.

The overall effect has reduced the temperature by two degrees Celsius and helped purify the air, according to a city authority video.

Bees and birds have returned, residents are engaged and gardening jobs have been created, it added.

“It’s one of the better examples (of urban replanting), driven by a policy which increases biodiversity, with a social dimension,” Simay said.

– Chengdu’s apartment blocks turned jungle – 

It promised inhabitants of a Chinese megacity life in a vertical forest, with luxuriant plants and greenery on their balcony.

“The air is good when you wake up in the morning, and the green trees are good for us elderly people,” said Lin Dengying, who lives in one of the eight towers making up Qiyi City Forest Garden in Chengdu which opened in 2018.

Some parts look like a treehouse perched within a tropical forest, while other places look overrun by their own vegetation, like a jungle is invading and bursting off the terraces.

In September, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported that only about 10 families had moved into the more than 800 apartments due to what some residents said was an infestation of mosquitoes.

It shows, said Doussard, the need not only to consider a project’s environmental impact, but also its “liveability”.

Gabon’s Ivindo National Park was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Wednesday in recognition of the nation’s success in defending biodiversity and challenging climate change. 

The park is the second nature reserve — after Lope Park in 2007 — to be listed in this small central African country, which is 90 percent covered by forest and known for efforts to preserve its natural heritage.

“A great day,” tweeted President Ali Bongo Ondimba, adding that the inclusion “rewards Gabon’s efforts to protect its forests, which play a key role in the fight against global warming”.

At the end of June, Gabon became the first African country to be paid by international funds to continue its efforts against deforestation on its territory.

The 300,000-hectare (740,000-acre) park is home to some emblematic mammals, now threatened, such as the forest elephant, gorilla, chimpanzee, leopard and three species of pangolin.

Some parts of the site are barely explored, according to UNESCO. 

For several years, the Gabonese authorities have developed a relatively advanced policy to protect the Central African rainforest, called “the second lung of the earth” after the Amazon.

It has 13 national parks, covering 11 percent of its territory, and 20 marine protected areas. Gabon is home to nearly 60 percent of Africa’s remaining forest elephants, recently listed as critically endangered. 

Dutch archaeologists said on Wednesday they have unearthed a Roman canal and road near ancient military camps that were this week listed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites.

The canal — more than 10 metres (33 feet) wide — and road were uncovered last week near the eastern city of Nijmegen, a major Roman-era settlement with permanent military bases that were awarded the UNESCO status.

They are believed to have been built and used by the Roman military, according to RAAP, the country’s largest consultancy for archeology and cultural history.

Nijmegen is on the Rhine, the border of the Roman Empire at the time, it said in a statement, adding that the discovery was “unique” for that region of the country.

Many Roman soldiers were stationed along the river and the canal probably linked Nijmegen and the Rhine and was used to transport troops, supplies and building materials.

The Roman highway, with its original gravel pavement preserved, provides new insight into the road network of around 2,000 years ago, Eric Noord, who is leading the project, told AFP. 

Gabon’s Ivindo National Park was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Wednesday in recognition of the nation’s success in defending biodiversity and challenging climate change. 

The park is the second nature reserve — after Lope Park in 2007 — to be listed in this small central African country, which is 90 percent covered by forest and known for efforts to preserve its natural heritage.

“A great day,” tweeted President Ali Bongo Ondimba, adding that the inclusion “rewards Gabon’s efforts to protect its forests, which play a key role in the fight against global warming”.

At the end of June, Gabon became the first African country to be paid by international funds to continue its efforts against deforestation on its territory.

The 300,000-hectare (740,000-acre) park is home to some emblematic mammals, now threatened, such as the forest elephant, gorilla, chimpanzee, leopard and three species of pangolin.

Some parts of the site are barely explored, according to UNESCO. 

For several years, the Gabonese authorities have developed a relatively advanced policy to protect the Central African rainforest, called “the second lung of the earth” after the Amazon.

It has 13 national parks, covering 11 percent of its territory, and 20 marine protected areas. Gabon is home to nearly 60 percent of Africa’s remaining forest elephants, recently listed as critically endangered. 

A 64-year-old beekeeper was charged on Wednesday for negligence over a forest fire that damaged homes and destroyed cars in the northern suburbs of Athens, a judicial official said.

The blaze raged on Tuesday at the base of Mount Penteli, where a fire in July 2018 went on to claim 102 lives in Greece’s worst-ever toll from a forest inferno.

Tuesday’s fire did not cause any casualties and was now “under control”, firefighters said.

The beekeeper appeared before a prosecutor earlier on Wednesday and will stand trial facing the charge of arson by negligence, which is a misdemeanour, the judicial official told AFP. He was released.

The man has beehives on the hill overlooking the cemetery of the town of Stamata, where the fire seems to have started. He is suspected of burning foliage near his hives, according to the ministry of civil protection.

Four other people arrested on Tuesday as part of the investigation were quickly released by Greek police.

The ministry said that “one house was burnt down, 12 others suffered damage, notably to their roofs” and around 10 cars were torched.

A total of 310 firefighters were mobilised to the area 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of Athens, backed by 10 helicopters and eight firefighting planes, the fire service said, with strong winds complicating operations.

Greece is hit by forest fires every summer, but experts have warned that global warming increases both their frequency and intensity.

Another heatwave is forecast for the country starting on Thursday, with temperatures expected to rise above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

The UN’s cultural agency UNESCO on Wednesday added a Welsh slate mining landscape to its list of world heritage sites, making it the 32nd location in the UK to be awarded the status.

The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales in the county of Gwynedd was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site at the remotely-held 44th session of the World Heritage Committee.

The designation comes one week after the world heritage body stripped the city of Liverpool’s waterfront of the accolade to the dismay of local and national politicians.

“The quarrying and mining of slate has left a unique legacy in Gwynedd which the communities are rightly proud of,” said Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford.

“This recognition by UNESCO will help preserve that legacy and history in those communities for generations to come and help them with future regeneration.”

British heritage minister Caroline Dinenage called the decision “a huge achievement” and hoped it would create economic opportunities in the mostly rural region.

UNESCO’s heritage list features more than 1,100 sites, which must meet at least one of its 10 criteria and demonstrate “outstanding universal value” to be included.

Other heritage sites include India’s Taj Mahal palace, the Grand Canyon National Park in the United States and Peru’s Machu Picchu landscape and ruins.

Gwynedd’s slate mining past has left quarries, steam railways, industrial buildings and water systems in a mountainous region that encompasses Snowdonia National Park.

The northwest Wales slate landscape is the fourth Welsh site to receive UNESCO recognition alongside the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape in south Wales, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, plus four 13th-century castles and two town walls in Gwynedd.

Slate quarrying has been carried out in the area for more than 1,800 years, with the material used to roof public buildings, homes and factories.

Northwest Wales became a centre of global slate production in the 19th century, and Wales provided about one-third of the world’s roofing slate at the industry’s peak.

Welsh slate was used to build landmarks including Westminster Hall in London’s parliament building, Copenhagen City Hall in Denmark and Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building.

UNESCO also awarded a double listing to the city of Bath in southwest England, which is now one of 12 European spa towns designated by the UN body.

Last week, Liverpool became only the third place to lose its world heritage status after UNESCO judged that development plans threatened its historic port.

Regional mayor Steve Rotheram said the decision was “a retrograde step” taken by officials “on the other side of the world”.

Fossilised structures discovered in northwestern Canada may be from sponges that lived in oceans as long as 890 million years ago, making them the earliest known animal life on Earth, research showed on Wednesday.

The findings also challenge the long-held idea that animals did not arise on Earth until after a major infusion of oxygen into the atmosphere and oceans.

Sponges are simple animals with an ancient history. Genetic evidence gathered from modern sponges has shown they likely emerged between 1 billion and 500 million years ago.

But until now there has been no evidence of fossilised sponge bodies from this period, known as the early Neoproterozoic era.

Elizabeth Turner, a professor at Canada’s Laurentian University’s Harquail School of Earth Sciences, looked for evidence of sponges in 890-million-year-old reefs that were constructed by a type of bacteria that deposited calcium carbonate. 

She found networks of tiny tube-shaped structures containing crystals of the mineral calcite — suggesting they were contemporaneous to the reef — that closely resemble the fibrous skeleton found within some modern sponges.

If her structures Turner identified end up being verified as sponge samples, they will outdate the current oldest known sponge fossils by 350 million years.

Although the implications of her possible discovery, published in the journal Nature, Turner said she was not getting carried away.

“The earliest animals to emerge evolutionarily were probably sponge-like. This too is not surprising, given that sponges are the most basic animal in the tree of animal life,” she told AFP. 

“The nature of the material is familiar from the bodies of much younger body fossils of sponges,” Turner said.

She said the possible sponges were around one centimetre across, and “would have been tiny and inconspicuous, living in shadowy nooks and crannies below the upper surfaces of the reefs”

If the structures do turn out to be confirmed as sponge specimens, that means they would have lived roughly 90 million years before Earth’s oxygen levels reached levels thought to be necessary to support animal life.

Turner said that if confirmed to be sponges, she believed that they lived before the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event, during which oxygen levels increased, subsequently leading to the emergence of animal life. 

“If I am correct in my interpretation of the material, the earliest animals appeared before that event and may have been tolerant of comparatively low oxygen levels, relative to modern conditions,” she said. 

“It is possible that the earliest animals were tolerant of low oxygen — some modern sponges are — but that more complex animal types that require a higher oxygen level did not appear until after the Neoproterozoic oxygenation event,” Turner added.

A 64-year-old beekeeper was arrested on Wednesday accused of causing a fire that damaged homes and destroyed cars in the northern suburbs of Athens, a fire department official said.

The blaze raged on Tuesday at the base of Mount Penteli, where a fire in July 2018 went on to claim 102 lives in Greece’s worst-ever toll from a forest inferno.

However Tuesday’s fire did not cause any casualties and was now “under control”, firefighters told AFP.

The beekeeper was due to appear before a prosecutor on Wednesday, the fire department official told AFP. 

He is suspected of burning foliage near his hives in the town of Stamata, where the fire started, according to the ministry of civil protection.

Four other people arrested on Tuesday as part of the investigation were quickly released by Greek police.

The ministry said that “one house was burnt down, 12 others suffered damage, notably to their roofs” in the blaze, and around 10 cars were torched.

A total of 310 firefighters were mobilised to the area 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of Athens, backed by 10 helicopters and eight firefighting planes, the fire service said, with strong winds complicating operations.

Greece is hit by forest fires every summer, but experts have warned that global warming increases both their frequency and intensity.

Another heatwave is forecast for the country starting Thursday, with temperatures expected to rise above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung erupted on Wednesday, spewing a massive column of smoke and ash into the sky.

The eruption of the volcano in North Sumatra province lasted about 12 minutes, a local geological agency said.

“The volcanic material reached 4,500 metres into the air,” the head of the agency’s Sinabung monitoring post, Armen Putra, told AFP.

An image shared by the agency showed a column of thick, dark smoke coming from the crater.

Clouds of smoke and ash travelled 1,000 metres away from the peak, the agency added.

No evacuation orders were issued because the debris did not reach the nearest villages and there was no reported disruption to flights in the area.

But authorities have instructed people to avoid a five-kilometre zone around the crater that has been left unoccupied for years as volcanic activity increased.

Sinabung, a 2,460-metre (8,070-foot) volcano, was dormant for centuries before roaring back to life in 2010 when an eruption killed two people.

It erupted again in 2013 and has remained highly active since. 

The following year an eruption killed at least 16 people, while seven died in a 2016 blast.

Indonesia — an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands — has nearly 130 active volcanoes. 

It sits on the “Ring of Fire”, a belt of tectonic plate boundaries circling the Pacific Ocean where frequent seismic activity occurs.

At a new playground in central Warsaw, algae feast on pollutants and carbon dioxide to provide a bubble of clean oxygen in a city ranked as one of the most polluted capitals in the EU.

“There is untapped value in bringing the bio-intelligence of natural systems into cities,” said Marco Poletto, co-founder of the ecoLogicStudio urban design firm behind the project.

He suggests “turning buildings into living machines that produce energy, store CO2 and clean the air,” according to a statement.

The Polish capital was selected for the inaugural edition of the AirBubble as the city is in particular need of clean air. 

According to data released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) last month, Warsaw ranks 269th for air quality on a list of 323 European cities.

The list was created based on the average level over the past two years of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the air pollutant with the highest impact on health.

The EEA blames air pollution — caused in large part by the burning of coal — for an estimated 50,000 premature deaths per year in the country of 38 million people. 

The bubble is outfitted with dozens of glass cylinders containing algae immersed in water that feast on air being pumped in from below. 

The green organisms consume polluting molecules and carbon dioxide before releasing clean oxygen out the top of the bioreactors.

The small circular playground is located next to the riverside Copernicus Science Centre, which stations an employee there to answer any questions and make sure no one gets hurt. 

On a recent warm afternoon, children of various ages monkeyed around in the bubble: shrieking, laughing, they hopped on rubber bubbles and swung from rope.

“This is fun,” shouted eight-year-old Ania, while jumping.

Her mother, Malgorzata Wrona, also applauded the eco-friendly concept.

“It’s pretty cool. Especially in a big city right? Because you know: pollution and smog and everything,” the 42-year-old English teacher told AFP.

“This gives the kids, at least, a chance to breathe some fresh air.”

She said that where they live, in the western city of Wroclaw, many people still heat their homes with coal, so the air quality is “terrible”. 

The AirBubble will be in place until November for now, but could possibly become a permanent fixture. There are plans to install bubbles in other cities too.