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BEGIN (Blue Green Infrastructure through Social Innovation)

Together we can build more resilient and liveable cities

The overall objective of BEGIN is to demonstrate at target sites how cities can improve climate resilience with Blue-Green Infrastructure involving stakeholders in a value-based decision- making process to overcome its current implementation barriers.

BEGIN’s driving ambition is to substitute traditional ‘grey infrastructure’ such as concrete for ‘blue-green infrastructure’ (BGI) such as parks, rivers, and lakes.


Montpellier, France: Agroforestry: Agriculture of the future? The case of Montpellier

Example of agroforestry concept applied by farmers: trees and medical species cultivation. Author and source: Christian Dupraz

The objective is to make the Montpellier agricultural systems more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as increasing temperatures or droughts, water and biotic stresses and more extreme events.

Main benefits can be summarized as follow:

INRA (Institut Nantional de la Recherche Agronomique) researchers showed that the production from one hectare of a walnut/wheat mix is the same as for 1.4 hectares with trees and crops separated. This was a 40% increase in productivity, far better than any other innovation introduced by agronomists in the recent past.

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