Turkish city of Gaziantep joins EBRD Green Cities urban sustainability programme

Turkey’s southern-central city of Gaziantep has joined EBRD Green Cities, the flagship urban sustainability programme of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) that is helping to finance Turkey’s green transition, the EBRD has announced.

Gaziantep, an historical trade and cultural centre, has a population of more than 2mn people and is home to half a million Syrian refugees—the second-largest Syrian community in Turkey after that of Istanbul. The municipality is committed to a sustainable urban transformation, the EBRD said.

Fatma Sahin, Mayor of Gaziantep, and Nandita Parshad, EBRD managing director for sustainable infrastructure, formalised the agreement bringing Gaziantep into EBRD Green Cities in London on November 2. 

Sahin said: “We are living in a new era in terms of local government – now is the time to focus on the green economy. One of the most important issues to consider while doing municipal work nowadays is the protection of the environment. I believe that we have taken important steps towards transforming Gaziantep into a green city. That is why this agreement that we have signed with the EBRD is very important to us. Together, we will make a great contribution to a better world.”

Parshad said: “We wholeheartedly welcome Gaziantep into our flagship Green Cities programme. Together, we will identify, prioritise and connect environmental challenges with sustainable infrastructure investment and policy measures. I welcome Mayor Sahin’s forward-looking vision for the city and look forward to working together.”

As a first step, the EBRD will explore the opportunity to invest in a solar project and help the city to integrate solar power into electricity grids.

In addition, the development bank will help Gaziantep to devise a Green City Action Plan, the backbone of the programme. The step-by-step investment plan will look at how to climate-proof essential services, including solid waste, water, wastewater, street lighting, energy supply and transport. The Clean Technology Fund, part of the Climate Investment Funds, will finance the plan’s development.

Gaziantep, a longstanding partner of the EBRD, is the fourth Turkish city to join the Green Cities programme, after Izmir, Ankara and Istanbul. The bank has previously financed Gaziantep’s acquisition of environmentally friendly compressed natural gas (CNG) buses and has provided a loan for the construction of a state-of the-art hospital under a private-public partnership arrangement.

EBRD Green Cities has a financing volume of €3bn. So far, it includes more than 50 cities and municipalities. The programme was launched in 2016 to address enormous environmental challenges presented by urban conurbations.

The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Turkey. It has invested more than €14bn in the country to date, most of it in the private sector.