Nicosia

Nicosia is the capital city of the Republic of Cyprus. It lies roughly in the centre of the island in the Mesaoria Plain, flanked by the northern range of Kyrenia Mountains with its distinctive ‘Pentadaktylos’ – the five-finger mountain. The capital has two distinct faces: the old, original part of the city, surrounded by sturdy Venetian walls over 400 years old, and a busy modern metropolis, which has a population of 200,452 inhabitants (≈16.6% of the country’s total population) together with the suburbs. As the country's capital, Nicosia is the financial and business center of Cyprus. Besides the abundance of financial services within the city, Nicosia relies primarily on the tourism and shipping industries.

NBS Exemplar:
Regarding the urban quality of the city, it is deeply marked by the division of the island of Cyprus and faces at least two related challenges: (i) the performance of its mobility system, which is heavily biased towards the use of individual cars, and (ii) the lack of adequate and environmentally rich public spaces in the proximity of the densely built urban core. Nature-based solutions (NbS) could operate a convergence of the solutions to both of these challenges.
As part of the CN project, Nicosia decided to work further on the implementation of a very ambitious large-scale project: a Network of open and green spaces that will cover the district of Nicosia, which will promote the health and wellbeing of people, improve their quality of life, and enhance the environmental quality of the area of intervention (air quality management actions to reduce air pollution and its associated health impacts).

Using the Connecting Nature Framework:
Through Connecting Nature Framework, Nicosia Development Agency team aims to help delivering NbS as part of a strategic plan that places environmental objectives and healthy, attractive, and natural surroundings for the local population higher on development agendas. More specifically, Connecting Nature Framework of Nicosia has been approached as a tool that aims to include NbS as policy theme in national and local strategies, which in turn would prepare and facilitate projects on the ground.

Connecting Nature Partner:
Nicosia Development Agency (ANEL)