Neighborhood groups in the city of Buenos Aires demand that Together for Change (JxC), the political force that responds to the head of government Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the approval of laws for the creation of more green spaces that help mitigate the effects of change in the capital of Buenos Aires, which will be the venue, next week, for the global summit of mayors in which they will seek to agree on measures to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
The requirement is based on the deficit of green areas in the City, which places it well below international standards, a situation that led neighbors and neighbors to develop and present dozens of projects to the Buenos Aires Legislature to add parks and squares. However, they did not obtain a favorable result due to the resistance of the ruling party of Together for Change to support the initiatives.
In the City, the average of green spaces is 6.7 square meters per inhabitant, when international recommendations suggest 10 to 15 square meters.
Green spaces, according to the Buenos Aires Urban Code, are areas intended for public use whose characteristic is the predominance of plant species and absorbent soil and, according to official data, in the City the average of this type of surface is 6.7 square meters per inhabitant, when international recommendations suggest 10 to 15 square meters.
Green areas occupy 2,063 hectares of the Buenos Aires territory, among which large parks, squares and ecological reserves predominate; However, the survey of the local government includes in the survey as wild spaces also cemeteries, flower beds, flowerpots installed on the sidewalks and traffic diverters that are located in streets and avenues.
The average of 6.7 square meters, in turn, drops significantly in some communes of Buenos Aires, as occurs in the one that groups the neighborhoods of Almagro and Boedo, where there are 0.2 square meters per inhabitant; and the one that includes Villa General Mitre, Villa Devoto, Villa del Parque and Villa Santa Rita, where the level is 1.5.
With these negative numbers in environmental mattersdifferent neighborhood movements transferred proposals to the Legislature to increase the number of green areas, however, almost all of the initiatives have been awaiting debate for years.
“We tell the C40 that the best way to combat climate change is with a simple recipe: more green and less cement,” they expressed from the socio-environmental organizations, which advanced what they will do actions to make your claims visible with a view to the international forum that starts on Wednesday, including an action on Tuesday on the steps of Paseo del Bajo.
“We tell C40 that the best way to combat climate change is with a simple recipe: more green and less cement”Socio-environmental organizations
Villa Santa Rita, the only one in the Buenos Aires district that does not have a plaza
Among the most evident deficit of green spaces in the city of Buenos Aires is the situation of the Villa Santa Rita neighborhood, which is the only one in the Buenos Aires district that does not have a square, for which the neighbors began a campaign to get the City to expropriate some abandoned property in the area.
To do this, they developed different initiatives in the last decade that were presented in the Legislature, which were never debated in the commissions that they control from the ruling party, and a few months ago they even drafted a project that locates four available plots for the local administration may have options to generate a public space.
In dialogue with Télam, Guillermina Bruschi, a member of “A square for Santa Rita”said that there were several meetings with legislators from all over the political spectrum in which “everyone is allied and agrees” with the initiative, but regretted that the discussion that reaches a consensus to later reach a sanction has not yet taken place. .
“The political decision is missing because the lots are for sale at an affordable price”pointed out and explained that “you cannot wait any longer, Villa Santa Rita has been waiting for a square for years because green spaces are necessary and urgent for different aspects, such as health, social issues since they are meeting places and in terms of environmental”.
In that sense, he specified that “public spaces, together with trees, make cities more resilient because they can mitigate the effects of climate change.”
“You cannot wait any longer, Villa Santa Rita has been waiting for a square for years because green spaces are necessary and urgent for different aspects, such as health, social issues since they are meeting places and environmental matters”Guillermina Bruschi, member of “A square for Santa Rita”
“Green Railway Lands”
Also in the Buenos Aires Parliament, a citizen initiative was filed to repeal the regulations that enabled the construction of buildings on a set of railway land in the neighborhoods of Colegiales, Palermo, Liniers, Caballito and Villa Urquiza, to stop the advance of towers and, in change, gain green land of great extension..
The proposal of the “Green Railway Lands” movement was also promoted in the legislative field repeatedly without success since the ruling party did not give its endorsementl, for which they lost “parliamentary status” and went to the archive.
Months ago, they once again pushed ahead and insisted on individual initiatives for each of the beaches, as in the case of Villa Urquiza, where residents seek to convert a property adjoining the train station into a public square “in defense of the environment and the quality of city life”.
“They promote the construction of more and more towers, instead of creating quality green spaces in the last land reserves of the city, which are the former beach areas”Adrián Hernández, member of the Meeting in Defense of Public Space
SCHOOLBOYS
In the case of Colegiales, where there are 0.7 square meters of green area per inhabitant, the local group tries to rescue a sector of the beach that served as a railway maneuvering beach to generate a green space and thus mark a limit to the sale of adjoining lots for real estate developments.
“We presented the project that is in the Planning Commission and we also went to the offices of the deputies, who tell us that the idea is not bad, but there is still no date for debate,” Adriana Fernández, a resident of Colegiales, told Télam.
In this regard, he noted that “The damage has already been done in the neighborhood with the sale of the other lots, which is why we ask for this environmental reparation law for Schoolchildren.”
In addition, he considered that the C40 summit “is a farce because the Buenos Aires government does not take advantage of the opportunity to transform the railway yards into parks”, with which he evaluated that “it is a City very far from what is seen in official propaganda” .
“Federal Capital is a City far removed from what is seen in official advertisements”Adriana Fernández, neighbor of Colegiales
In Caballito, where the green surface is 1.8 square meters per inhabitant, a neighborhood movement was formed to claim for a green space in the 15 hectares of the railway yard of the former Sarmiento line, which until now is in the middle of a dispute over ownership of land in the Nation and the City of Buenos Aires.
“They promote the construction of more and more towers, instead of creating quality green spaces in the last land reserves of the city, which are the former playones,” Adrián Hernández, a resident and member of the Meeting in Defense of Space, told Télam. Public.
He pointed out that “they cement and privatize absorbent land, prune and kill trees but ironically they are hosting a Summit against climate change. The level of cynicism of the City Government seems to have no limit. That is why we continue to mobilize, defending the neighborhood and presenting new bills”.
More than 100 mayors from around the world will participate in the C40 Summit
The World Summit of Mayors of C40 will start next Wednesday in the City of Buenos Aires and will bring together more than 100 community leaders from abroad and some 150 Argentine mayors who will discuss cities and climate change with the intention of generating new consensus in the face of the challenge of the carbon neutrality.
The international meeting will be held at the Recoleta Convention Center with the motto “United in Action” and it will be led by the mayor of London and president of C40, Sadiq Khan, together with the head of the Buenos Aires Government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, while the leaders of more than 100 global cities from the five continents will participate, 23 of them capitals.
Among those confirmed are Anne Hidalgo, from Paris; José Luis Martínez Almeida, from Madrid; Ada Colau, from Barcelona; Femke Halsema, from Amsterdam; Claudia López Hernández, from Bogotá; Claudio Orrego, from the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile; Ricardo Nunes, from San Pablo; Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles; Eric Adams from New York and Oh Se-hoon from Seoul.
Likewise, the forum will convene more than a hundred international exhibitors, including Marty Walsh, Secretary of Labor of the United States; Sergio Díaz-Granados, president of CAF (Development Bank of Latin America); María Fernanda Garza, president of the International Chamber of Commerce, and María Neira, director of the Department of Public Health and the Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO).
DIARY
The summit will begin on Wednesday 19 with a Federal Urban Forumwhere 150 mayors will present a Declaration of Argentine Cities, with new climate commitments, which have been worked on since the beginning of the year.
In this sense, the inclusion of the recognition of the climatic emergency and the relevance of cities in its approach, limiting the increase in temperature to 1.5°C and being carbon neutral by 2050, presenting action and climate plans, and publish Greenhouse Gas Inventories and risk assessments.
It will incorporate, for the first time since the first meeting in 2005, an agenda with meetings between the mayors and national and international leaders of the private sector to advance “joint solutions and results of public-private cooperation projects to reduce emissions in critical sectors and increase climate ambition.
There will be an agenda of activities for delegations outside the Convention Center that includes visits to the Recycling Center, the Ecological Reserve, the Ecopark, the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood and the Historic District.
Regarding the security operation that the summit will have, the organizers indicated that there will be a protected corridor between the headquarters of the Convention Center in Recoleta and the hotel where the delegations will stay in the Retiro neighborhood, at the same time that they indicated that the transfers They will be done in electric vehicles and buses.
On the other hand, admitted that in this type of international meeting “there is a tradition of demonstrations”but they indicated that they hope that “they will not be of the level of violence as those that usually occur in Europe”.
Activities of environmental organizations
In this regard, on Tuesday from 5:00 p.m., on the steps of Paseo del Bajo, near the Casa Rosada, there will be a activity of social and environmental organizations to denounce that “while the C40 talks, the City of Buenos Aires cements, trees are felled, refreshing canopies are pruned and buildings are approved on the riverside contour”.
Also, more than 200 socio-environmental organizations and activists asked the head of the Buenos Aires Government to open an “instance of citizen participation” during the meeting and requested permission to install a tent on the esplanade of the Exhibition Center, a demand that has not yet been answered. .
