The Green City Accord is a movement of European mayors committed to safeguarding the natural environment. The Accord focuses on mobilising cities to step up their ambitions to achieve cleaner and healthier environments, thereby improving the quality of life of citizens.
The Green City Accord is a European Commission initiative to mobilise European mayors committed to safeguarding the natural environment. The Accord aims to support cities in their efforts to achieve cleaner and healthier environments, thereby improving the quality of life of city dwellers.
By joining the Accord, mayors agree to step up their efforts in five key areas by 2030:
- air: significant improvement in air quality by moving closer to respecting the WHO’s air quality guidelines and ending exceedances of EU air quality standards as soon as possible
- water: making significant progress in improving the quality of water bodies and the efficiency of water use
- nature and biodiversity: considerable progress in conserving and enhancing urban biodiversity, including through an increase in the extent and quality of green areas in cities, and by halting the loss of and restoring urban ecosystems
- circular economy and waste: advance towards the circular economy by securing a significant improvement in the management of household municipal waste, an important reduction in waste generation and landfilling, and a substantial increase in re-use, repair and recycling
- noise: significantly reducing noise pollution in cities and moving closer to WHO recommended levels
The initiative will support cities in designing and implementing actions covering these five areas. Other activities include the collection and dissemination of good practices, the organisation of awareness-raising workshops in four European countries, and promoting knowledge transfer between city authorities through a ‘twinning programme’.
The Green City Accord is open for mayors to sign. Read more about how to join the initiative in the “Join us” section of the Green City Accord website.
The initiative was implemented until October 2023 by Eurocities (as lead partner) together with ICLEI and CEMR.
Click below to download the Green City Accord brochure in English. The publication is available in all EU languages on the website.