Deciding what to take with you when you travel have always been one of your main challenges – and that frustration is why I eventually created my own detailed packing list for travel essentials I want to share with you.
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Women on the Road’s Ultimate Long-Term Travel Packing List for Women
Documents & Bags
Passport + extra photocopy of the front page of your passport
Additional photo ID (such as a driver’s license, student ID) debit and/or credit cards
Copenhagen is one of the greenest cities in Europe and in the world. In 2014 the city received the European Commission’s European Green Capital Award for ranking number one on the European Green City Index and it is rated continuously among the most livable cities in the world as an example in municipal sustainability.
The urban population of Copenhagen is just a little bit over 1.2 million and it is the capital of Denmark and the country’s most populous city. Combining sustainable solutions with growth and high quality of life make the city and country at all often top international happiness surveys. The city is surrounded by water and parks. You can experience some of the many sustainable hotels, eat organic, and ride the electric city bikes around the old maritime city.
What are Copenhagen goals?
Copenhagen is growing, but this fact doesn’t stop the city’s ambitious plan and it is on track to be carbon neutral by 2025. New sustainable city districts are designed with an approach to urban planning and green living to be livable and people-friendly.
The carbon-neutral goal is supported by the CPH 2025 Climate Plan, which the City Council adopted in 2009. The city already met its goal to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2015. For comparison since 1995, Copenhagen has reduced carbon emissions by 50 percent. The CPH 2025 Climate Plan is a combined collection of specific goals and initiatives within four focus areas:
Energy Consumption
Energy Production
Green Mobility
City Administration Initiatives
Some of the sustainable city solutions are:
Increased mobility through integrated transport and cycling solutions has helped to reduced congestion significantly and improved the health of the citizens. Denmark is one of the countries with the highest investment in bike lanes and super cycle highways.
Attractive urban areas with a better quality of life, improved local business life, created jobs and generated revenue in the area. The harbor has been cleaned, which now allows Copenhageners to swim in it.
A very efficient district heating system where 98 % of all households are connected.
An implementation of a new district cooling system where cold is taken of the harbor water. This helps save over 70% of the energy compared to traditional air-conditioning.
The city is achieving these goals through a transition of our energy supply, building retrofits, waste management, public infrastructure, and other initiatives to support the transition on a long-term basis.
But to be successful, Copenhagen is collaborating with companies and knowledge institutions to find new solutions to specific challenges, which secures and improves the quality of life in Copenhagen and creates opportunities for innovation, jobs and green growth.
By 2025 based on analysis and forecast, the direct city investment in the decarbonization efforts will have reached around $472m, while private investors may have provided as much as $4.78 billion.
“We’ve looked at how climate change will affect Copenhagen in the long-term future”, says Lykke Leonardsen. “For Copenhagen, the most serious effect of climate change will be increased precipitation, so we’ve developed a plan that addresses how to catch all the rainwater in the city.” Leonardsen, a city planner, part of the team working on long-term climate change adaptation.
“In adapting to climate change, cities can choose either grey or green infrastructure,” says Professor Stuart Gaffin, a research scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University.
They are successfully combining growth, development, and quality of life with reduced CO2 emissions.
Some of the reasons are a large number of green areas, some of the cleanest water in the world – for drinking and swimming, a clean harbour and a world-famous cycling culture overflowing with bicycles, and high availability and consumption of organic produce. Denmark has been ranked as one of the safest countries in the world.
“The difference between Copenhagen and other major cities is that they’re very concrete in the short term and also look at what they need to do for the very, very long-term future”, says Brian Vad Mathiesen, an associate professor of development and planning at Aalborg University.
Want to learn more about sustainable travel? Check our other posts.
According to the EPI index in year 2016 (Environmental Performance Index) prepared by Yale and Columbia Universities, Finland is the world’s cleanest and greenest country.
The Environmental Performance Index is a method developed to measure the environmental quality of countries in numbers. The index compares how ecosystems and people’s health are protected in different countries. The index takes into account multiple factors such as care of air quality, clean water and their water resources and how they manage agriculture, forests and fish stocks, biodiversity, CO2 emissions.
In 2016, Finland had the highest EPI score in the world (90.68 out of 100), closely followed by fellow Nordic states Iceland and Sweden.
The index score is also influenced by energy solutions and the states’ attitude to the diversity of nature and climate change.
“Finland has the opportunity to develop into a gem of nature tourism. We have clean and exuberant nature all over the country in the vicinity of good connections and services.”
Finland’s air, forests, lakes and drinking water are exceptionally clean by global standards. More than 80% of Finland’s lakes are either good or excellent in quality. More than 70% of Finland’s land area is the forest, which makes Finland one of the most forested countries in the world. The air quality in Finland is good, because the country is situated far from big sources of emissions and because Finland’s own emissions have been successfully curtailed. According to WHO, Finland has the cleanest air of the EU countries and the third cleanest air in the world after Canada and Iceland.
The score justifying the country’s number one position in the EPI index is 90.68. After Finland came to Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Slovenia. The EPI report praises many of Finland’s environmentally-friendly objectives. Finland intends to create a carbon-neutral society by 2050, in which nature’s capacity is no longer exceeded.
The country has also passed a decree according to which as much as 38% of Finnish energy production will be renewable in 2020. Already now most electricity is produced in an environmentally-friendly manner in the nation.
Photo Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels
Comprehensive commitment
According to the EPI report, the environmental policy goals set by the nation are tough but practical. The key goal is to achieve a carbon-neutral society by 2050. Under that overarching goal, progress is made by setting smaller objectives aimed at protecting the environment and carefully measuring the success of their implementation. However, the core strength of Finland is that society as a whole is committed to protecting the environment.
In addition to legislation and government policies, Finnish businesses and civil society are also active in introducing sustainability initiatives. For example, the Helsinki-based Uusix workshop offers long-term unemployed people the opportunity to work converting and repairing recycled materials into newly useable items. Many other companies have shifted their focus on renewables. This year, use of renewable energy is set to surpass that of fossil fuels for the first time. Businesses are proactively rising to the challenge set by the government to reach 50% renewable energy consumption by 2030.
It’s all coming together because different sectors of Finnish society are supporting each other in pursuit of a greener tomorrow. The key question to ask is – why is that?
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“Finland has the opportunity to develop into a gem of nature tourism. We have clean and exuberant nature all over the country in the vicinity of good connections and services. Holistic nature experiences can be built for tourists, for admiring the silent wilderness landscape, picking berries and mushrooms for food on an excursion, going to the sauna next to clean waters and waiting in a hide-out for the majestic bear to arrive from the shade of the forest as the night falls,” says biodiversity expert Riku Lumiaro of the Finnish Environment Institute.
