I attended COP15 as a International Youth Delegate of the International Youth Climate Movement in December, represented ECO Singapore as a Head of Creative and as an Asian Team Leader for Project Survival Media. My job was primarily in the realm of media/design/journalism where I covered news and events and update the ECO Singapore blog. On this blog, we share our experiences and insights to the conference and update (primarily) Singaporean netizens on this landmark event in the fight against Climate Change. Our aim is to lobby other delegates, engage with media and work with international youth to affect change in climate change policy. On top of this, I designed all the logos for IYCM and related sub-groups, produced the video sequence for Project Survival Media and co-ordinated 3 independent media teams from the Fiji Islands, Philippines and Indonesia to produce short local documentaries around the theme of survival/climate change.

During the 2 weeks duration of COP15, I had the opportunity to visit Augustenborg in Sweden as part of a climate tour.

(taken from http://unfcccecosingapore.wordpress.com, images by me)

Augustenborg today is one of the environment capitals in the world, about 11 years after its establishment as an eco-city. Its 1800 apartments currently house around 3000, and has seen a low occupancy turnover rate since.  This is in stark contrast to its pre-eco days, when unemployment rates were high, and environmental problems were rampant. With Augustenborg, it appears that taking the sustainable route provides social, ecological and economic benefits.

The honour of hosting and producing the world’s first botanical roof garden, belongs to Augustenborg. Apart from that, the eco-city also produces solar energy and small-scale wind, focuses on energy efficiency, has a high recycling rate and actively engages in food composting, has an open storm water management system in place, as well as much residential participation and knowledge-exchange. Louise Lundberg of Scandinavian Green Roof, raises some disappointment at how slow the rest of the world is in catching up with Augustenborg’s eco-city.

The Botanical Roof Garden is a part of a larger project called the EcoCity Augustenborg, a very sucessful and far reaching project in regeneration of an older development from the 50`es and 60`es. The housing area has been transformed with open storm water management, beautiful green areas, waste recycling, and strategies to save energy and to produce lokal renewable energy. The small municipal industrial site has become certified according to ISO 14001 environmental standards, and is the foundation on which the Botanical Roof Garden rests.

Time for London to get it on perhaps?

The visit to Augustenborg opened my eyes to the actual technology to creating a green roof or vertical garden. It has real benefits to the community it was introduced into, it raised the standard of living, property prices went up, people wanted to live there, the local residents took ownership of the gardens and what was once a dodgy neighborhood is now a sought after real estate. Seeing the actual benefits of a greener neighborhood was really inspiring and at the same time begs the question, “why is it now adopted in London??”.

This would certainly help boost the idea of greening London via Vertical Gardens due to it’s proven track record from a similar sister project in Sweden. Though vertical gardens are not their forte, they have also just begun experimenting with the process of vertical gardening.

A full grown tree could grow on a roof without compromising the structural integrity of the roof due to proper irrigation and the use of customized soil structures to hold a larger amount of soil for the tree’s roots. With enough water, the roots will not spread far from the tree to seek water and nutrients.

As you can tell, the soil does not have to be very deep for it to be able to sustain the growth of a tree. Speaking to the tour guide, Louise Lundberg, she mentioned the possibilities of Vertical Gardens sprouting around the world as another form of urban greening. Citing the same examples which could also be found on this blog at http://hello.iampingpong.com/?p=61 and other blog posts under http://hello.iampingpong.com/?cat=5 . It was partly because when this project was founded a decade ago, vertical gardening has not been realised yet and hence was not implemented.