THE BLOG

Nice Ville Verte Fund: Promoting Corporate Engagement in the Ongoing Greening of the City of Nice

With the launch of the Nice Ville Verte Fundthe City of Nice aims to accelerate the greening of the city by encouraging businesses to financially support greening operations while benefiting from visibility on concrete actions taken, carbon credits, and tax deductions under the patronage law.

Participation in the “Nice Ville Verte” Fund provides an opportunity to support businesses in their CSR initiatives and to materialize their commitment to climate and environment through concrete local actions in the service of the community.

This fund enables the opening and sharing of greening initiatives with economic actors in the territory by bringing together patron and citizen businesses around common objectives:

living better in the city and together,
acting for ecological transition,
contributing to the beautification of the shared living and working environment.

In this way, the city of Nice is joining other local authorities such as Bordeaux, Lyon, Montpellier, Lille, Le Havre, Toulouse and Rennes that have committed to similar initiatives.

The first companies committed to the initiative are:

Century 21 : Lafage Transactions, Benjamin Mondou
Hôtel Méridien : Stéphane Dartois, Managing director
Heaven Travel Agency (FW Barbotto Group): Jessica Barbotto
BNP Paribas Real Estate : Stéphane Gaux
Fondation Life Terra : Sven Kallen
The accounting firm BACC: Pierre Bonaud
Transcan : Franck Cannata
SAJ Restaurant : Danny Rizkallah

Participating in the greening initiative

The Nice Ville Verte Fund is managed by the Metropolis and supported by a Patronage Department and partners to support this initiative and reach out to businesses.

The patronage law of August 1, 2003 allows for a corporate tax deduction of 60% of the amount of the donation, up to 0.5% of the pre-tax revenue.

Each year, the company can, in partnership with the City of Nice, specifically direct its donation towards a particular greening program or project, thus better communicating its commitment.

The fund offers several levels of commitment

Eco-Partner: starting from 10,000 euros (or 4,000 euros after tax deduction) allows for financing 2000 small plants, 10 large trees or the equivalent of 30m² of permeable soil in a public garden

Patron: starting from 20,000 euros (or 8,000 euros after tax deduction) allows for financing 5000 small plants, 20 large trees, and greening interventions in a school courtyard, for example.

Major Patron: starting from 50,000 euros (or 20,000 euros after tax deduction) allows for financing 10,000 tree seedlings, 50 large trees planted in the city, or more than 100m² of permeable soil, among other options.

Contacts: Isabelle BERNIGAUD, Deputy Director of Attractiveness – Contact Email, and Sébastien BORGHI, Director of Partnerships and Patronage – Contact Email.

4 major programs have already been initiated

1 tree per inhabitant

By 2026, the City of Nice has committed to planting 280,000 new trees and thus achieving one tree per inhabitant within 4 years. “Currently, the city’s tree heritage is made up of 70,000 trees, or 1 tree for every 5 inhabitants.

Greening of schoolyards

Since 2022, the City of Nice has accelerated its unprecedented greening plan dedicated to all 153 schoolyards in the city, ultimately reaching over 30,000 schoolchildren. Invested with more than 3 million euros, this program benefits nearly twenty schools every year.

New green lungs

The City of Nice is creating new green, cool, and local lungs:

Complete requalification in 2023 and 2024 of the Jardin d’Arménie,
By 2025, a new Jeanne d’Arc garden will be created.
The extension of the Promenade du Paillon, also known as the Green Corridor Season 2, will see its first green spaces planted starting in 2024, and will become an iconic green lung of 8 hectares, a real urban forest that will connect territories and citizens by 2026.

Street Gardens in the City Center

The City of Nice is beautifying and greening the strategic axes of the city center. Thus, more than 6 kilometers of former bus lanes, freed up with the arrival of tram line 2, are being transformed into green lanes, pedestrian areas and bike paths, while major boulevards or iconic streets are being requalified to be calmer and more valued.

Nice, Green Capital of the Mediterranean

This ambition, initiated in 2008, allows the city to regain its natural landscape through a transport scheme, urban transformation to rebalance the territory by 2030, and a voluntary Climate Plan.

Thus, Nice is now ranked as the first French city with more than 200,000 inhabitants in terms of the percentage of tree heritage on its territory (KERMAP study 2019 ‘Our Green Cities’) with 26% of its urban space occupied by trees.

Convinced of the fundamental importance of greening in the fight against the effects of global warming, disease prevention, and the well-being of its inhabitants, the municipality aims to make Nice a green capital of the Mediterranean by quickly investing in concrete and complementary achievements:

Permeabilization of soils,
Creation of significant natural spaces,
Green networks and new shaded areas,
Greening of schoolyards,
Urban agriculture plan and shared gardens,
…

The objective is to develop an additional 70 hectares of green spaces in all neighborhoods, as many areas of freshness, full ground, and carbon capture.

This strong proactive policy is based on the ‘Climate Air Energy Territorial Plan 2019-2025’ led by the Metropolis Nice Côte d’Azur, with the objective of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.