Guimarães has formalized its candidacy to become the European Green Capital 2025, the municipality announced today, adding that the list of finalists will be known in June and the winning city revealed in October of this year.
“The city of Guimarães has just formalized its candidacy to become the European Green Capital 2025. After having presented a first application in 2017, reaching the 5th place among the 13 competing cities, the municipality continued to strengthen its commitment to the sustainable development of the territory, over the past few years, developing projects of high value”, indicates the city council, in a statement.
The municipality argues that this new application demonstrates the path and goals to be achieved for seven sustainability indicators: air quality; noise; water; nature, biodiversity and sustainable land use; waste and circular economy, climate change; mitigation; adaptation.
“Throughout the application, Guimarães once again demonstrates the importance of an integrative and multidisciplinary governance model – Governance Ecosystem 2030 – based on a commitment to research, involvement, education and environmental awareness, through Laboratório da Paisagem, the institution that coordinated this application. The writing structure of the application included technicians from the municipality and participated entities, as well as experts in the various areas under evaluation,” stresses the municipality.
The city hall led by Domingos Bragança (PS) explains that “the city’s commitments to climate neutrality and Zero Waste, the focus on environmental education through the PEGADAS [program], or the structuring projects of the Ecovias or the retention basins, are some of the many highlights of this application.
The mayor of the municipality highlights “Guimarães’ journey in the environmental area”, underlining that this candidacy “demonstrates great maturity and makes evident the success of the numerous projects in transforming the territory and the citizen”.
“Guimarães shows that a heritage, historical, and cultural city can also be a green city,” says Domingos Bragança, quoted in the communiqué.
The European Green Capital Award, presented by the European Commission, recognizes local efforts to build more sustainable urban centers and thus improve the economy and quality of life for city dwellers.
Each year, the distinction is awarded to a city that has distinguished itself by consistently achieving high environmental standards and that is committed to setting ambitious goals regarding urban sustainability and combating climate change.
The municipality of Guimarães, in the Braga district, explains that only cities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants from European Union member states, European Union candidate countries, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland are eligible to apply for the European Green Capital title.
The shortlist with the finalist cities for recognition as European Green Capital 2025 will be known in June and the winning city announced in October.
In case of victory, Guimarães will become the second Portuguese city awarded, after Lisbon won this title in 2020.
