Krista Kampus – Tallinn European Green Capital 2023

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Krista Kampus is the Executive Director of Tallinn – European Green Capital 2023. She has over 25 years of professional experience in international cooperation and policy development, with a focus on EU cohesion policy. She is also the Head of the EU & International Relations for Tallinn. In addition to her role as the Executive Director of the European Green Capital 2023, she is also the Head of Strategy Development and International Cooperation at Tallinn.

Under her leadership, Tallinn has re-organized its city structure and organization to align with the goals of the European Green Capital initiative. She has been involved in various events and discussions related to the initiative, sharing her vision, ideas, solutions, and experiences.

Kampus has found the time in her busy schedule recently to speak with Mayors of Europe and answer a couple of our questions about the future of Tallinn, the city’s best practices and the Estonian capital’s upcoming projects and initiatives.

As executive director of EGC 23 you are leading Tallinn through this flattering role. What does this leadership role mean for Tallinn in the context of your long term ambition?

Tallinn is very proud to hold the title of European Green Capital 2023. Especially since the idea of the European green capital was born in Tallinn – in 2006, 15 cities signed a memorandum for the title of European Green Capital in our city.

There is still a lot to do to turn Tallinn into a truly sustainable city, but it is our ultimate priority. The main goal of the strategy Tallinn 2035 is “Green and Global”. Since the approval of the strategy by the council in December 2020, this narrative has been well received and adopted by citizens and leaders alike.

For us, the Green Capital means that Tallinn is a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive city – the European Green Capital title gives us a good opportunity to accelerate this transition. We want every citizen of Tallinn to benefit from the European Green Capital year and the accompanying developments.

We strive towards integrating a sustainability mindset into all our actions, policies, and day -to -day city management to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the local green deal objectives while making our city better living environment of the people.

The European Green Capital Year is an accelerator that will boost the green way of thinking in all areas of the city governance, as well as our citizens will be more aware of how different sustainable and green options in their daily lives will benefit them. Even in the little things, like choosing to bike or walk instead of driving to your destination, recycling or planting biodiverse flowers in their garden.

The changes begin from the city itself. For example, thanks to the green capital year, we have developed a guide for environmentally friendly events, added environmental requirements to the Law of Procurements, made our own institutions follow the principles of the green office.

No one can solve environmental issues on their own and we all have to think about what kind of living environment we are leaving for the next generation. In Tallinn’s EGC year, how are you working together with the citizens of Tallinn and local businesses and organisations to make your City more sustainable, adaptable, smarter and more inclusive.

This absolutely true. We have set a goal of bringing the city closer to the people, involving more people, companies and various non-governmental organisations, and boosting environmentally friendly initiatives.

Especially during this year, Tallinn wants to support new initiatives that help realize the goals of Tallinn – European Green Capital 2023: preservation of biodiversity and the natural environment, resistance to climate change with the help of eco-innovation and sustainable development and co-creation.

This means we bring green innovation to the city, promote the transition to a circular economy, raise people’s environmental awareness and bring various co-creative initiatives to the city, between communities, companies and universities.

One of our initiatives is the Green Capital non-profit activity grant. We had three rounds at the start of 2023 and more than 100 applications, out of which we gave over 1 million euros to 48 projects. We decided to support various educational programs, big events that are already taking place (Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn Music Week etc), which will have special green capital year environmental programs, and projects with sustainable additions to our urban space.

We have also started a green ambassador’s network which at the moment connects around 20 green activists/entrepreneurs who are proud to call Tallinn their city and have a mission to turn their city greener and more sustainable. We help to find them a larger audience for environmental topics important to them and they help us to encourage our citizens to adopt more environmentally friendly habits. Hopefully this network will keep expanding and continue existing after our green capital year.

We also have a participatory budget in Tallinn – every September people from all the 8 districts in Tallinn can present their ideas and projects in their local area. Around 1 million euros will be given for the projects that the people themselves choose through public voting. In the European Green Capital year, the focus will be on community projects in 12 EGC areas.

This year Tallinn is also organizing various biodiversity-preserving action days all over the city and invites all city residents to participate in them. It’s a year-long volunteer program where citizens can get involved to support the biodiversity of their area. For example, the restoration of sand lizard habitats is taking place in Tallinn’s unique Pääsküla bog.

We are opening the Participation Hub in August which will be a co-creation space equipped with state-of-the-art visualisation technology, with the aim of facilitating citizens’ participation in the urban design processes and fostering meaningful discussion between the city, developers, professionals and citizens.

For the first time, Tallinn in organizing a People’s Assembly this autumn. With the help of experts and stakeholders, the City of Tallinn invites citizens to answer the question “How can we link Tallinn’s green spaces into an inviting urban whole?” This is an engagement format that has not been carried out in Tallinn before and we are keen to gain new experience.

What are your flagship projects for 2023?

The latter two mentioned – the Participation Hub and People’s Assembly – are among our flagship projects. All together we have about 20 flagship projects, that include:

The Pollinator Highway, 1st phase. The Pollinator Highway is a 13,5 km long meadow-like natural environment rich in species, a green corridor that runs through 6 Tallinn city districts out of 8 along a former railway embankment. It will be developed into a city-wide linear park. The guiding principle is preserving and enhancing biodiversity while offering the local residents a space for outdoor activities and sustainable means of mobility. The development of the first stage of Pollinator Highway covers mainly the North Tallinn district.

Green Tracks. Programme of innovative pop-up interventions in Tallinn’s urban space. The aim is to improve the quality of green areas, by bringing greenery to densely used areas, supporting the development of urban green networks, and testing innovative urban spatial solutions in the form of changes in spatial organization, as well as in the form of testing new spatial prototypes. For example, we have created a summer park in the heart of Tallinn’s Old Town.

Regional Campaign “Save our Sea”. The aim is to involve all the cities along the Baltic Sea and draw attention to marine litter (especially mini litter like small plastic, cigarette butts etc.), which is a clearly visible problem along the Baltic Sea coastline. More than 50 cities around the Baltic Sea have shown interest in joining the campaign.

Tallinn GreenTech Week. For a week in November 2023, Tallinn will not only be the green capital but the green technology capital of maybe the whole world, as we host the CleanTech Forum Europe, and organise the Green Capital EXPO (NEXPO) to introduce smart solutions and new technologies, implemented by the cities, and to facilitate dialogue between European cities, Greentech companies and leading experts in this topic.

Test in Tallinn. Test in Tallinn is an initiative to welcome companies around the world to test their smart solutions on the streets of Tallinn in three focus areas: mobility, energy efficiency and renewable energy. We launched it in January and have already selected 9 companies from 4 countries for cooperation, first test will start later this year.

MaaS (Mobility as a Service) The MaaS platform is adapted to Tallinn and will combine the various transport services offered in Tallinn into a single package together with scheduling and an option to pay for the entire trip at once (public transport, micromobility, taxis, self-driving vehicles etc.)

Green Twins. The project addresses the issue of urban greenery and how it can be better considered in planning processes for sustainable and more democratic cities. The digital 3D-model shows how urban greenery changes over time and helps us understand how these changes affect the city’s ecosystem.

CENTRINNO, Kopli 93 Creative Centre. The aim of the project is to build a self-organized community where the community members are more capable of governing without the government. Creating an ecosystem of local stakeholders (schools, NGOs, makerspaces, artisans, businesses, activists) to boost the local productive and creative economic environment to make the neighbourhood more self-sufficient and resilient.

The National Youth Song and Dance Celebration “Holy is the Land”. The festival brings together ca 100 000 participants and visitors from Estonia and abroad. In cooperation with the Tallinn – European Green Capital, for the first time in Estonia, environmentally friendly criteria will be applied to such a large event. For example, no single use tableware is allowed at the festival (a rule that started from 1st of June 2023 in Tallinn for all big events). The aim is to keep the ecological footprint of the festival as small as possible and to use local raw materials and resources where possible. The same principles are applied to the event’s partners and suppliers.

Do you think your experience and lessons learned you will gain through this process of 2023 will be transferable to other cities so they can advance smarter and faster based on your experience? If yes, do you have some examples of partnerships.

Rethinking governance is not something that one city can do alone. Based on our experiences Tallinn is developing a model for sustainability governance with the UN SDG-s as the main framework. Tallinn launched the Sustainability Governance Peer Learning Hub in June at Urban Future conference 2023. Tallinn creates an international sustainable management cooperation platform that gathers best practices, knowledge and experience and offers other interested European cities its integrated sustainable development action plan and model for implementation in their conditions.

We are calling out to all interested parties – cities, academia, think tanks, experts etc. – to join forces and work together in elaborating the framework for how we govern the cities of the 21st century.

How would you encourage European City leaders to candidate their city for the important prestigious EGC role?

To receive the title is an honour as the European Green Capital title is given to cities that set an example to every other city in Europe. So it is a big opportunity to tract attention and find international partners and organisations to work with.

Internally it is a chance for change – our green capital year slogan in Tallinn is Wildly changing. When applying for the title, we knew that Tallinn still had a lot to do to become more environmentally friendly in the fields of transport, circular economy and the urban space. The European Green Capital title is giving us as a city the opportunity to look at all of the activities of the city and brainstorm together to make the city better.

(Photo credit: Tallinn)