What Good Are Greenbelts?

The term “greenbelt” refers to any area of undeveloped natural land that has been set aside near urban or developed land to provide open space, offer light recreational opportunities, or contain development. And, yes, the natural greenbelts along areas of Southeast Asia’s coastlines, including the region’s mangrove forests, served as buffers and helped to prevent even greater loss of life from the December 2004 tsunami.

The Importance of Greenbelts in Urban Areas

Greenbelts in and around urban areas have probably not saved any lives, but they are important nonetheless to the ecological health of any given region. The various plants and trees in greenbelts serve as organic sponges for various forms of pollution, and as storehouses of ​carbon dioxide to help offset global climate change.

“Trees are an important part of the city infrastructure,” says Gary Moll of American Forests. Because of the many benefits trees provide to cities, Moll likes to refer to them as the “ultimate urban multi-taskers.”

Urban Greenbelts Provide Links to Nature

Greenbelts are also important to help urban dwellers feel more connected to nature. Dr. S.C. Sharma of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in India believes that all cities should “earmark certain areas for the development of greenbelts [to] bring life and color to the concrete jungle and [a] healthy environment to the urbanites.” While urban living may hold important advantages over rural living, feeling disconnected from nature is a serious drawback of city life.

Greenbelts Help to Limit Urban Sprawl

Greenbelts are also important in efforts to limit sprawl, which is the tendency for cities to spread out and encroach on rural lands and wildlife habitat. Three U.S. states—Oregon, Washington, and Tennessee—require their largest cities to establish so-called “urban growth boundaries” to limit sprawl through the establishment of planned greenbelts. Meanwhile, the cities of Minneapolis, Virginia Beach, Miami, and Anchorage have created urban growth boundaries on their own. In California’s Bay Area, the nonprofit Greenbelt Alliance has successfully lobbied for the establishment of 21 urban growth boundaries across four counties surrounding the city of San Francisco.

Greenbelts Around the World

The concept has also caught on in Canada, with the cities of Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver adopting similar mandates for the creation of greenbelts to improve land use. Urban greenbelts can also be found in and around larger cities in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Are Greenbelts Essential to World Peace?

The greenbelt concept has even spread to rural areas, such as those in East Africa. Womens’ rights and environmental activist Wangari Maathai launched the Green Belt Movement in Kenya in 1977 as a grassroots tree-planting program to address the challenges of deforestation, soil erosion and lack of water in her home country. To date, her organization has overseen the planting of 40 million trees across Africa.

In 2004, Maathai was the first environmentalist to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. Why peace? “There can be no peace without equitable development, and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space,” said Maathai in her Nobel acceptance speech.

EarthTalk is a regular feature of E/The Environmental Magazine. Selected EarthTalk columns are reprinted on About Environmental Issues by permission of the editors of E.

Edited by Frederic Beaudry