Accountants and botanists join quest to help cities breathe
Cities are the leading producers of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), and from an early age we are taught that our plants and trees take in that bad CO2 gas and give us back our life-giving oxygen.
In the fight to reduce CO2 emissions most attention has been placed on energy efficiency measures such as using bicycles or the insulation of homes and offices. Yet little attention has been focused on the lungs of a city, namely green spaces, lakes and waterways, which both capture carbon naturally and act as a natural buffer, reducing the need for heating and cooling of a city.
Recognising this knowledge gap, a team of accountants from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Business and Economics and researchers from the School of Botany formed a research team with the Royal Botanic Gardens.