SLOVENIA

The Slovene case will focus on proposal for completing the existing municipal decrees and rules for public areas with focus on urban trees, and in raising awareness of the importance of trees and green infrastructure among general public.

 

Slovenia is a land of forests. The forests cover about 3/5 of the area, which means that almost every Slovenian place is close to the forest, which also applies to Novo mesto.

Novo mesto is a small town in the South-East of Slovenia with a large number of urban forests in the vicinity (it is the capital of Dolenjska region and the seat of the Municipality of Novo mesto; with 24,000 inhabitants). Consequently, many people believe that there are enough forests and it is why urban trees often remain overlooked by decision-makers, experts and general public.

In the past, urban trees have been subjected to improper maintenance (mostly only removed, improperly pruned etc.), also there are no future plans for further planting of urban trees.

Municipal legal framework is poorly developed and the maintenance of existing and the planting of new green infrastructure is not widely regarded (especially trees) as the most economical measure of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

 

For this reason, relevant stakeholders from public sector and actors from civil society will work together to achieve the set goals. They will start with in-depth review of all existing documents and detection of existing active projects in connection with the topic (detection of the real situation), invite potential external collaborators to participate in the project and define a timeline for next steps for achieving their goals.