AIPH, the International Association of Horticultural Producers and the world’s champion for the power of plants proudly presents the AIPH World Green City Awards, which recently opened for entries for the 2022 inaugural edition.
The leading role of city authorities is recognised for promoting and supporting greater inclusion of nature and plants in urban environments. The AIPH World Green City Awards 2022 are designed to champion ambitious nature-orientated approaches to city design and operation. Specifically, they seek to recognise public initiatives relying on a greater use of plants and nature to create better city environments – helping to fulfil local aspirations for improved economic, social and environmental resilience.
The awards celebrate innovation, achievement, and commitment to the globally recognised imperative to embrace a nature-orientated solutions that harvest the power of plants and associated ecosystems services to help address the major challenges facing cities today – or tomorrow. AIPH initiated these awards to bring wide recognition to the value of plants in providing solutions for common city problems and to create an enabling environment to shape and nurture a strategic shift in city governance and planning.
AIPH invites all cities, large and small, to showcase their ambitious actions by entering the 2022 edition of the AIPH World Green City Awards.
Enter the Awards today!
Cities worldwide are keen to learn best practice in city greening and to promote their own greening achievements. Cities strive to be ‘green cities’, and AIPH World Green City awards are offered in recognition of excellence in this regard. World city awards are highly coveted, bringing attention to a city that results in increased business, tourism and development as well as community pride. The AIPH World Green City Awards are therefore unique in the sense that they are the first global awards where plants and nature are the core focus.
These prestigious awards provide an opportunity for cities to be associated with the only global awards in the world celebrating urban living green.
The AIPH World Green City Awards is an ongoing competition, with entries open every 2 years, allowing approximately 18 months from the call for entries to the awards ceremony. Cities are invited to enter, and the winners are announced at a special gala event awards ceremony. Winners may also be invited to showcase their greening projects at an AIPH approved International Horticultural Expo.
The AIPH World Green City Awards were launched on 22nd April 2021 at the AIPH Green City conference “Champions of Green Cities”, and online entries are now open for the inaugural 2022 edition. The awards themselves will be presented at a gala ceremony to be held in October 2022.
The 2022 edition of the AIPH World Green City Awards will be offered in six categories, with a final selection made from a shortlist of the best three in each category, and presenting three category winners, and one overall AIPH World Green City winner. The six award categories for the 2022 edition of the World Green City Awards are:
- Health and wellbeing: Addressing the medical, behavioural, and social determinants of health for residents.
- Climate change: Tackling the root causes and effects of climate change in order to build more liveable and resilient cities.
- Economic recovery and inclusive growth: Creating systems and solutions that allow all city residents to overcome economic distress and thrive.
- Biodiversity: Addressing the loss of species, habitats, ecosystem health, and genetic diversity.
- Water: Ensuring that water resources are safeguarded and wisely used, with clean water available to all while also protecting residents from flooding risks.
- Social cohesion: Fostering belonging, trust and inter-generational as well as cross-cultural relationships to prevent exclusion, marginalisation and violence.
Entries consist of a short, simple, written statement, made in English, through an online portal, and may be complemented by supporting evidence such as images, videos, publications (e.g. copy of a report), letters of support (e.g. from partners). The online portal is now open to receive entries by cities right up to the submission deadline of 14th March 2022.
For more information on how to enter the awards, click here.
There are many benefits in entering the AIPH World Green City Awards. It is the first international competition that cities enter to:
- Gain recognition for the greening they have done and the benefits of this.
- Promote their city at an international level.
- Inspire a global movement for greener cities.
- Demonstrate that their city is highly desirable to live and work in.
- Showcase how nature can improve the health of citizens, increase job opportunities, and stimulate economic development and stronger greening regulations.
- Demonstrate how ambitious local actions contribute to achieving global agendas
By entering, cities stand a chance to:
- Have their initiatives featured on the AIPH website and integrated to the case study library associated with the AIPH Green City Guidelines. All shortlisted entries will be featured.
- Win an award certificate and a trophy. Winners can nominate key partners and key staff so that additional award certificates can be prepared in their name.
- Gain global recognition and profiling opportunities as winners will be promoted via AIPH and the World Green City Awards partners’ and sponsors’ media channels.
- Have their city’s work displayed to a significant global audience in the AIPH pavilion of an International Horticultural Expo.
- Receive up to 4 complimentary tickets to the gala event of the Awards ceremony for winners.
The awards will be judged over two levels. A technical panel of experts will assess the entries against their technical merit in using plants and natural systems to deliver benefits – essentially judging the impact and extending best practice. The second layer of judging will be by a jury of internationally recognised leaders in City, Nature, Resilience and Sustainability themes, and will judge the entries on their potential for influence – this is a mix of transferability, innovation, and distinctiveness (‘wow’ factor).
Award entries will be assessed on the basis of five evaluation criteria:
- Vision: the initiative should be bold and include a fresh new model for using and/or delivering nature-orientated solution(s).
- Significance: the initiative should be designed to address a serious local problem or set of problems.
- Implementation: the initiative should have achieved or be well on its way to achieving its stated objective(s) and/or desirable outcomes.
- Learning and Transferability: the initiative should have generated some learning content or mechanisms that enable enhanced local practice in the future and/or offer potential for customised replication in other cities.
- Resilience: The initiative should be mindful of its impact on the planet and of its ability to be sustained over time.
Through the World Green City Awards, AIPH aims to ignite a global movement of cities who are demonstrating the principles of “Living Green” in action and inspiring other cities to raise their ambition through the development of a rich case study library which celebrates best practice. Thus, Award entries will contribute to building a global platform for cities to showcase their bold actions and benefit from the learnings from cities elsewhere.
For more information, check out the FAQs and Rules and Procedures.
The 2022 AIPH World Green City Awards timeline is as follows:
- 22nd April 2021- Launch of the award and call for expression of interest.
- 16th June 2021- Entries open- the application guidelines and an offline version of the application submission form become available to help entry preparation
- 14th March 2022- Deadline to submit an entry online through the online portal
- 31st May 2022- Shortlisted cities announced.
- 30th June 2022- Additional information requested by the technical panel must be submitted.
- 29th July 2022- Jury meets to select winners in each category and the overall winner.
- 15th August 2022- Winners of awards notified and invitations made to these cities to attend the gala awards ceremony.
- September/October 2022- Awards ceremony and announcement of the overall winner of the AIPH 2022 World Green City Award.
Don’t miss this prestigious opportunity to demonstrate your city’s commitment to “living green” and showcase your ambitious actions for plants and nature.
Enter the AIPH World Green City Awards today!
For any queries, questions, feedback, or to get in touch with the AIPH team, mail or
To stay in the loop, follow AIPH on: LinkedIn @AIPH; Facebook: @theAIPH; Twitter @AIPHglobal