Asunción Green City of the Americas - Pathways to Sustainability project

Creation of new green areas, Maintenance and management of urban nature, Strategy, plan or policy development

Urban population in Paraguay, which represented 37% of the total population in 1974, has increased to a current 59%. As Asunción has evolved from a small city to a metropolitan region it has experienced several problems. The growth of the metropolitan area has been unstructured rather than planned, creating a series of urban problems that affect the city’s environment, economy, and quality of life, including transport (an increase in emissions resulting in air pollution), solid waste (increase in GHG emissions generated by the decomposition of waste resulting in soil pollution), and biodiversity threats as it is being eroded through habitat conversion and degradation leading to fragmentation, reducing the viability of populations. As such, the intervention aims: 1) To improve urban planning taking into account environmental sustainability indicators in Asunción and its Metropolitan Area; 2) To reduce emissions from the public transport sector in the AMA by focusing on the optimization of the bus route, promoting bicycle lanes and generating options for the reconversion of the bus fleet; 3) To generate models for improving the management of solid urban waste for the AMA, promoting recycling measures and reducing waste through awareness campaigns; 4) To create a green belt for the AMA based on the consolidation of green areas already existing or to be created in Asunción. 5) Asuncion is vulnerable to extreme events due to its location on the shores of the Paraguay River and related cyclical floods, which poses additional challenges for transport and waste management. To address these challenges through proper urban planning (1,2)

The "Green Assumption of the Americas - Sustainable Pathways" project has four components, the first of which is the functional framework for a sustainable and resilient city; the second having mobility and sustainable transport in the WADA; the third management of solid waste and chemicals; and the fourth, the management of urban green areas. (2)In 2020, the municipality worked on three principles: general project conditions, generation of the cartographic database and territorial diagnosis. Also in 2020 the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MADES), with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), developed the "Guide to Urban Arborization for the Metropolitan Area of Asunción", a document with everything we need to know about the subject. In 2021, within the framework of the initiative, "Live Parks Laboratory!" which covers a series of training activities promoted by the Ministry of Urban Planning, Housing and Habitat, central and local government officials, are trained in the management of public spaces. (5) In 2021 the "Green Corridors" project was started, which consists of connecting the existing green spaces, considered as "lungs" of the city, through arteries where biodiversity in both flora and fauna will be the protagonists. Among the most important spaces are Guasu Park, the Botanical Garden and Ñu Guasu. This will be possible by identifying streets that can be intervened with planting trees, shrubs, flowers, so that they consolidate as a corridor, in order to create "biodiversity islands" through green facades that promote the consolidation of the ecosystem in an urban environment. (6)

• Local government/Municipality
• Citizens or community groups