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Campinas has been consistently advancing in its environmental policies, enhancing the development of management processes and transversal actions to strengthen and consolidate Campinas as a sustainable city.
To this end, in a strategic and participatory fashion, Campinas has developed numerous environmental plans, including policies for basic sanitation, green areas, water resources, environmental education, and the greenhouse gas inventory. Together, their results pointed Campinas in the direction of establishing programs for forest management, biodiversity enhancement, green infrastructure implementation (such as linear parks and wildlife passages), sustainable rural sanitation, the creation of environmental education centers and young educators collectives, monetary incentives for rural producers, agroforestry implementation, tree planting, and protection of water sources.
Campinas has 190 km of planned cycle paths, 14 electric buses in the municipal fleet, 30 hectares of new parks for the population, and 1 million planted trees. In addition, Campinas was the first municipality to receive the UN certification for resilient cities and has gone from being the 220th in the state ranking of sustainable cities to the 7th in just 6 years.
With the government’s commitment, partnerships with the private sector, and transparency of information that allows for monitoring the population’s participation in the implementation of these actions, Campinas’ work has stood out in the international community.
“Sustainability is a matter of conscience and goes beyond public policies: it concerns all of us citizens. To preserve nature, the forests and the species is to sow, in the present, a decent future for new generations.”
Jonas Donizette
Former Mayor of Campinas
INNER FORESTS
Campinas’ Green Areas and Conservation Units System (SAV-UC) aims to ensure public green areas for recreation for the population in order to improve the quality of life from an environmental perspective. It also aims to connect the city’s green areas to ensure biodiversity. Through these actions, Campinas has also protected water resources, protected the city’s fauna and flora, preserved regional genetic heritage, and created bicycle paths to improve urban mobility. Finally, the city looks for ways to make residents the owners of these spaces, incentivizing them to use and protect them more. The consolidation of the SAV-UC has been done through the establishment of linear parks, ecological corridors, and the consolidation of municipal conservation units.
NEARBY FORESTS
Campinas Metropolitan Region (RMC)’s connectivity area was designed to promote more sustainable regional development, helping to foster nature conservation, maintain ecological processes and social and economic prosperity, as well as increase resilience in the face of climate change.
The connectivity area will connect ecologically relevant areas of the RMC’s 20 municipalities, maintaining or restoring landscape connectivity and facilitating genetic flow between populations. It will also promote alternatives for adopting low-impact land-use practices, creating incentives for the green economy, and connecting people through nature-based solutions and urban infrastructures such as linear parks and greenways.
STORY
Bringing A Quarry Back To Life
Campinas was once called the ‘Princess of the West’ mainly because it was the productive centre of the region being rich in citrus, coffee and sugarcane plantations.
It also became an industrial hub where foundries, factories of machine parts, various machinery and textile mills flourished and continue to this day.
One remnant of the original boom is a quarry called Praça Ulysses Guimarães, some 130,000 square metres, which was transformed into a park in 1994.
The green space includes some striking red public art and the large area is a popular spot for family outings including places to eat, bicycle paths and hiking lanes.
The city invested $1.3 million in 2013 and a year of work to add more trees, two playgrounds, sports grounds, three kiosks a skateboard area, and event space that is now an added green space for the residents of Campinas.
The city also still boasts quite a few working coffee plantations which serve as attractions for visitors.
Looking towards long term resilience the City of Campinas has chosen to embrace the OECD’s Resilient Cities programme which looks to make cities ready to absorb, recover and prepare for future shocks (economic, environmental, social & institutional), specially designed for cities that may have heavily relied on industry.