Circular Stories – Building a Green Bridge between Maribor and Tuzla

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Circular Stories is a monthly series on regional experiences and practices fostering the circular economy across Europe.

Maribor, the first Slovenian city with a strategic approach to the green transition, and Podravje-Eastern Slovenia, the first CCRI pilot region among recent EU member States, empowered the City of Tuzla (Bosnia and Herzegovina) to initiate a truly place-based green transition through the EUKI-funded project Strategic Approach to Green Transition (SAGT).

City-to-city capacity building: the parallel stories of Maribor and Tuzla

The cities of Maribor and Tuzla are comparable in many ways. From sharing a strong industrial past to hosting vibrant university cities, Maribor and Tuzla also have many similarities in terms of population, ecosystem, and key environmental legislative points. Connected by a similar background, the two cities could start working together to support the City of Tuzla in achieving its first strategy for the green transition. The experience of Maribor in adapting to the EU legislation in the years following Slovenia’s EU membership provided useful insights for the learning process.

Knowledge-sharing for the green transition across borders through the SAGT project

The city of Tuzla recognised the need for strategic planning to implement the green transition, particularly needed to address the challenge of air pollution, but lacked concrete instruments to implement a green transition strategy. Thanks to the SAGT project, the Regional Development Agency of Maribor, the City of Tuzla and the business centre BIT Centar started working together to address this need.

Building capacity for better air quality

Within SAGT, the Regional Development Agency of Maribor developed a capacity-building methodology tailored to Tuzla’s ecosystem to identify the challenges which could be addressed by policies and practices implemented at the city level. These included monitoring air quality, regulating individual heating and regulating city traffic.

A targeted transfer of good practices followed: it included support in organising and implementing public events, a study visit, and, finally, a draft Strategy and guidelines for integrating green transition into the future city strategic document.

Empowered for the future

As a result of the project, the staff of the City of Tuzla learned how to prepare the Strategy for Green Transition of Tuzla, which will be adopted by the city alongside the Local development strategy in the next planning period.