10.1 - Introduction

The city’s natural assets are an essential resource for conserving biodiversity and for creating a healthy, low carbon, resilient and connected city. They include our parks, open spaces, landscapes, watercourses, coastline and urban tree canopy, some of which have international importance for biodiversity and provide crucial ecosystem services, including flood defences and carbon sequestration. They benefit urban well-being, are an essential part of making healthy places and bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change. Protecting and enhancing the quality of Dublin City’s natural assets and ensuring green, sustainable and climate resilient development will be central to ensuring the liveability of the city and its attractiveness as a place to live, work and visit into the future.

The Environmental Protection Agency has highlighted in its State of the Environment Report[1]the challenges we are facing in Ireland. Aspects of the Irish environment including climate, air, soil and water are not meeting prescribed targets with ecosystems and biodiversity being eroded on an unprecedented scale. The EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 calls upon cities of the European Union to address biodiversity loss by restoring ecosystems. The UN Decade of Restoration was announced in June 2021. This requires a commitment from cities to increase the percentage of restored and naturalised areas on public land at the city level.

In this respect, it is important to develop a proactive green infrastructure strategy for the city which will balance the need of the city to grow and consolidate with the need to protect and enhance vulnerable natural assets. As part of a green infrastructure approach, the City Council will seek more urban greening, healthy placemaking and development which works with nature in order to lessen the impacts of climate change, improve air and water quality, provide effective flood management, encourage walking, cycling and physical activity generally and also to protect and improve biodiversity and ecological resilience.

[1] Ireland's Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020. EPA (2020)