EcoSattva, a women-led environmental consulting firm, has reversed the degradation of the Kham river in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly known as Aurangabad), a seasonal river that was the site of dumping and pollution for decades. Through collaboration with experts and community stakeholders, the Kham River Restoration Initiative revived the river’s ecosystem, prevents flooding during monsoon season and protects the livelihoods of fishing communities downstream.

The restoration project started with a research phase in 2020 to understand the full scope of challenges facing the river and communities surrounding it. This research informed the project’s three-pronged approach, including deep ecological restoration of the riparian zone, city-wide and regional waste management, and a robust social inclusion and engagement campaign.

Priority areas for climate adaptation and resilience were identified for riverbank stabilization and physical restoration through pitching, dredging, desilting and planting of native species along the riparian edge. Ongoing monitoring and data collection ensure lasting impacts.

A main feature of the restoration effort is a 5-kilometer EcoPark that features rejuvenated freshwater ponds and wetlands once contaminated by decades-old legacy waste, a safe and accessible walking path, and an amphitheater for educational and community gatherings.

Garbage Vulnerable Points were targeted as key locations for intervention with maximum impact on river health, and some of the reclaimed land turned into pocket parks for community use. The Unnati program leads training and capacity building for sanitation staff in 42 wards and employs women Safai Saathi informal waste pickers to systematically improve solid waste management.

An ongoing education and engagement campaign aims to dispel misinformation regarding the importance of seasonal rivers and to restore a cultural ethic around the Kham river. Public awareness at the grassroots level is integrated into every facet of the work, including educational programs in schools, cultural events such as dance performances, and locally commissioned art. The work is now serving as an impetus for expanded river cleanup work along other water bodies including at the regional basin level.

There is no prior existing relationship between the project and WRI. For full disclosure, please visit here.

Oslo is one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, raising environmental concerns and the need to offset the emissions generated by such rapid growth. By budgeting emissions similar to finances, the city’s innovative Climate Budget is able to assess and calculate the impact of climate measures from various sectors, achieving significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and reaching climate goals despite population growth.

In 2016, Oslo adopted the first ever Climate Budget to fulfill a local government pledge to achieve a 95% reduction in emissions compared to 2009 levels by 2030.

The Climate Budget prioritizes emission-reduction initiatives targeting transportation, heavy-duty vehicles – including buses, construction machinery and logistics transport – and waste incineration, which together contribute about 90% of Oslo’s emissions.

The city’s public transportation fleet, including its tram, ferry and bus systems, now operates nearly entirely on electric power, and the city is investing in active mobility by expanding cycle lanes. The city has built 100 km of new cycle lanes, resulting in a notable 51% increase in cycling since 2016. Additional streetscape enhancements have improved safety for pedestrians and cyclists – famously, Oslo has recorded zero pedestrian deaths since 2019.

The Climate Budget helps incentivize cross-sectoral action. Oslo has set a mandate that all construction sites should be zero-emission by 2025. Additionally, Oslo has been working to implement carbon capture technology at the Klemetsrud incineration plant, which serves as its major source of energy.

Within Norway, other municipalities are adopting the climate budget concept for their own local climate action. And the C40 Cities’ Climate Leadership program is working with Oslo to implement climate budget pilots in over 12 cities worldwide.

There is no prior existing relationship between the project and WRI. For full disclosure, please visit here.

New York City has long been known as the “Concrete Jungle” for its towering skyscrapers and congested streets, but recently rising temperatures and extreme storm events have heightened the need for green spaces. The Green Community Schoolyards project expands access to green space, fosters long-term community ownership through a participatory design process, and improves New York City’s resilience to heat and flooding.

In 2004, the Trust for Public Land and the City of New York came together to create the Green Community Schoolyards project, transforming asphalt schoolyards in underserved areas into vibrant, green, flood-mitigating spaces that better serve students but are also available for community use.

In selecting sites for Green Community Schoolyards, the project employs a data-driven approach aimed at maximizing both social and climate resilience benefits. High-priority sites are selected based on climate risks, social vulnerability indicators, neighborhood income levels, and other social and climate factors.

School children are the primary designers of their own schoolyards, applying their learning on stormwater management concepts, such as rain gardens and permeable turf fields, into their designs.

Schoolyards are opened to the public outside of school hours, often becoming community centers, strengthening bonds within neighborhoods through events like cultural festivals, movie nights, group yoga and live performances.

This project is featured in New York City’s heat remediation and extreme flooding response plans and Trust for Public Land has expanded it into a national program across 15 cities and 23 states, including non-urban areas and varying climates.

There is no prior existing relationship between the project and WRI. For full disclosure, please visit here.

In Buenos Aires, the capital and most populous city of Argentina, the city’s Housing Institute tackled the challenge of providing safe, climate-resilient housing to informal settlements through a voluntary process. The Rodrigo Bueno climate-resilient housing project demonstrates that participatory, resilience-focused development can integrate housing security, economic opportunity and ecological preservation.

Buenos Aires experiences significant inequalities in access to decent housing and is pocketed by villas – informal, dense settlements that first appeared in the 1930s. Villas have grown over time into communities of vibrant, often self-organizing and self-advocating groups. However, most have almost no access to urban services and are marred by high poverty, crime and drug problems. Informal settlements are also heavily impacted by climate hazards due to their high densities, non-code compliant structures and lack of resources to recover from damages.

For more than 10 years, legal battles between residents of Rodrigo Bueno and the city raged over efforts to displace and evict residents. In 2016, a new government led to a strategy for upgrading the villa based on principles of equality, spatial justice, integration, social inclusion and non-discrimination.

In 2017, a new city law initiated the Rodrigo Bueno project, leading to intensive public consultation efforts by the Housing Institute, gradual construction of eight new blocks of multi-family dwellings and residents voluntarily moving into the new units.

The “historic neighborhood” of original self-built dwellings is still part of the community, occupied by families who have chosen to not move into new developments. Many of these homes have received structural and service upgrades (the process is ongoing) along with the entire neighborhood receiving paved streets and house numbers, further aiding in the formal integration of residents into urban life.

Through mixed-use development, 57 new retail spaces have been created, largely reserved for local businesses. There is also a plant nursery run by women residents, and a “gastronomic patio” where visitors to the adjacent Costanera Sur ecological preserve can stop for food from a variety of vendors.

The integration of Rodrigo Bueno is a part of a portfolio of slum integration projects across Buenos Aires impacting over 73,000 people across four neighborhoods. The concurrent projects share the same integration methodology.

There is no prior existing relationship between the project and WRI. For full disclosure, please visit here.

Fortaleza’s City Hall addressed the city’s low recycling rate and social inequity by leveraging the informal sector to improve working conditions, provide sustainable electric mobility and formalize waste-picking within the municipal recycling program. Re-Ciclo shows that education, investment and formalized working conditions can transform public perceptions around recycling and create a more sustainable, integrated city.

Like many other Brazilian cities, Fortaleza had a low recycling rate and lacked a structured municipal recycling program. Fortaleza’s informal waste pickers (catadores) often collected recyclables on foot by using hand-drawn carts. Waste pickers faced social stigma and earned minimal, unreliable wages.

The Fortaleza Innovation Laboratory (LABIFOR) and the city of Fortaleza developed Re-Ciclo to provide dignified working conditions for waste pickers, establish door-to-door recycling collection via electric tricycles and increase recycling rates in the community.

In 2019, the city launched the E-Catador program, formalizing waste picker association workers as municipal workers, allowing them to receive city benefits and personal protective equipment.

In 2020, LABIFOR staff held focus groups with the waste picker associations to understand their challenges. These discussions led to the establishment of new “Eco-Point” waste-collecting hubs throughout the city. In 2022, a pilot project introducing door-to-door collection via e-tricycles was introduced.

Re-Ciclo is complemented by a suite of circular economy initiatives in the Mais Fortaleza (“More Fortaleza”) program run by the city. These include a network of e-waste drop-off centers where young people receive training on e-waste refurbishment and disposal, and through which some refurbished products like computers can be donated to waste picker associations.

Re-Ciclo has scaled up rapidly from being an innovative pilot project of the city government to being managed by the city’s municipal agencies. Additional neighborhoods for recycling collection, more drop-off points, and more e-tricycles for waste pickers continue to be added.

Waste picker cycling routes and Eco-Point locations have also influenced the expansion of the city’s robust cycling network, better connecting residents to recycling centers and other amenities.

There is no prior existing relationship between the project and WRI. For full disclosure, please visit here.