The Green Seattle Partnership (GSP) is excited to share that Seattle has been selected as a “Role Model City” by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). As a part of being a Role Model City, Seattle will participate in a two-year collaborative effort to universally share best practices for supporting urban habitat with an International Ecosystem Restoration Cohort of 18 cities worldwide. Seattle is the only city in the USA in this cohort.   

“This affirms the relationship work each of you are doing as part of Green Seattle Partnership. Our success is built from the broad network of people engaging in restoration actions. For two decades, we have been learning and innovating together, rebuilding connections to the land, and creating a lasting community of care.”  

– Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Ecology Team Manager, Lisa Ciecko, reflecting on the UN recognition.

In 2021 Seattle’s Green Seattle Partnership joined the world to kick off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a worldwide movement to “prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean.” For twenty years, GSP has been leading community-driven urban ecosystem restoration projects on thousands of Seattle-acres, resulting in over 4 million plants and 340,000 trees installed in Seattle’s parks and open spaces. This work is one of the most important ways of delivering nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity. The UN’s Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is in alignment with Seattle’s goals.  

Looking ahead to 2024, we are anticipating an exciting year where we share our work with cities around the world as a Role Model City, and continue to support Generation Restoration, a UN program which elevates youth ecopreneurs who are putting the planet’s health first and bringing about real, concrete change.