Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor Fall 2020 - 27

green
Add some

maintaining GI projects. In fact, the European Commission has
stated that 30 per cent of the relief funds given to various EU
member states must be spent on climate change related projects.
Petito suggested that the legislative process of approving the
Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 could happen in early 2021 and in
parallel, funding for projects will be made available.
Closer to home, in the United States, a congressional bill to
establish the Public School Green Roof Project (PSGRP) will
likely be reintroduced in the House of Representatives after the
upcoming US elections scheduled for November 2020. The PSGRP
aims to secure more than $500 million of funding so that public
and secondary schools in low-income areas can install green roofs
on their rooftops over the next four years. This would include
coverage of technical assessments, installations, and maintenance of
green roofs. Included in the funding is $100 million dollars over a
four-year period for maintenance of the rooftops. GRHC's Technical Committee commented on early drafts of the bill which now
includes a recognition of Green Roof Professionals and the Living
Architecture Performance Tool. The PSGRP is being sponsored
by congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez and is proposed for public
and secondary schools where at least 30 per cent of students come
from families with incomes below the poverty line. Many organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and GRHC have
signed onto the bill. Programs like the PSGRP are effective at
tackling the well documented and problematic intersection between
environmental degradation and poverty by developing GI projects
in areas lacking in green spaces. Although the pandemic has taken a
toll on the world it has also sparked a global concerted effort for a
'green' recovery, which is an opportunity for governing bodies to go
all in on investing in GI.
Oliver Gillings-Peck is in the Masters of Forest Conservation at the University of Toronto, and works as a freelance journalist. Works Cited:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1590574123338
&uri=CELEX:52020DC0380
https://velazquez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/velazquez-billwould-bring-green-rooftops-public-schools
https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/plan/covid-19-resilience-eng.html#1
LIVINGARCHITECTUREMONITOR.COM

to your scene.

Turn your walls from lean to green. With
greenscreen®'s wall-mounted trellis system, you
can transform any blank vertical surface into a
green façade of living art. Whether it's
developing a brand new project or retrofitting
an existing building, our trellis panels are
designed to be mounted on a variety of surfaces
to change entryways, wrap around windows and
doors and enliven courtyards and bare building
walls-so you can change the everyday in a way
that's thoughtful, cost-efficient and sustainable
by nature.

Engineering Nature.

Project: West Hollywood AVSRS
Architect & Landscape Architect: LPA Design Studios
Contractor: T.B. Penick & Sons, Inc.

greenscreen.com

LIVING ARCHITECTURE MONITOR / FALL 2020 / 25

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html https://velazquez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/velazquez-bill-would-bring-rooftops-public-schools https://greenscreen.com https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/plan/covid-19-resilience-eng.html#1 http://www.LIVINGARCHITECTUREMONITOR.COM

Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor Fall 2020

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