A new investment project, worth almost 11.4 million euro, is creating public green spaces in concrete jungles across Europe. The projects include green roofs, parks, street trees, and more, all worked on in collaboration with local governments and organizations -- but concerns exist about their overall impact and the possibility of what some have termed "green gentrification."

A growing number of people in the famously crowded Tokyo metropolis are becoming ‘city farmers’, planting crops atop tall buildings or deep underground. In an age of detrimental climate change, urban cultivation and green roof agriculture will soon be necessary as food, water and energy resources become scarcer.

Geography and climate change challenge the viability of sea-level cities in Vietnam, but architects, researchers, and urban planners work together to find creative solutions. One architect in Ho Chi Minh City designed green roofs to absorb the rainwater that causes floods.

The Urban Bee Lab at UC Berkeley has spent over a decade collecting data about native Californian bees who regularly interact with humans so that they can share their findings to help farmers improve production. The lab collects specimens to help researchers down the line; they observe bees in nature; and they actively work with local farmers to exchange useful information. Short-term, the collaborations help farmers improve yield and provide a welcoming space to bees; short-term, the data collected will help protect and conserve native bee populations.

Detroit Hives has a twofold mission of reducing urban blight and protecting bees. The nonprofit organization purchases low-cost vacant lots and transforms them into farms for bee hives. Its creative partnerships with local businesses have provided honey for restaurants and flowerbeds to the farm, all while making Detroit more beautiful.

Elephants in Africa often eat a farmer’s entire crop, physical barriers don’t work, and fighting the elephants has left both people and elephants dead. After learning from Africans that Elephants don’t like bees, a researcher devised a hanging bee-hive/fence that effectively scares the elephants. The Elephants and Bees Project is helping farmers in Africa and Asia implement this solution.

Approximately twenty-five percent of the United State's alfalfa seed is produced in Walla Walla County, Washington, thanks in part to farmers successfully cultivating a unique working relationship with the region's native alkali bees. Through trial and error, the farmers have learned how to create a safe habitat for the bees to thrive, which in turn benefits their crucial crop.

Despite declining bee populations internationally, Amsterdam's bee population has stabilized and appears to be on the rise. Thanks to several initiatives such as insect hotels, the banning of pesticides and the creation of bee-friendly environments, the city's government-enforced pollinator strategy provides lessons for cities everywhere.

As farmland is converted to space for solar panels, researchers are planting native wildflowers amongst the technology to support populations of bees and other insects facing endangerment. While it's not the only solution needed to reverse the decline of pollinating species, as seen in the past decade, planting them in solar sites are a useful start.

The United States is adopting a practice that much of Europe has been using for for decades. Green roofs, which utilize either solar panels or implement the growth of vegetation, will help many cities throughout the country meet their energy goals as well as help mitigate against the harmful impacts of climate change.

New York City black tar roofs cause a number of environmental problems, including air pollution, heat absorption that raises energy consumption, and storm water runoff in the sewer system. Efforts to turn these old roofs into green spaces cool the buildings, enable the containment of more rainfall, reduce sewer discharge, generate energy, and absorb carbon emissions. New York City has a pilot program offering financial help for green roofs.

Edinburgh has begun a conservation project where roof space is transformed into a habitat for butterflies. The success of the project is being closely monitored with hopes of helping butterflies survive in the area, and attract new butterfly species to the area.

Farmland is expensive and scarce in urban areas. In Boston Higher Ground Farm uses green roofs to grow its produce and Grove Lab has designed a cabinet for people to grow their vegetables indoors.

Twenty-first century cities face the factors of climate change with intensity as urban heating threatens human and the earth’s health. The University of Notre Dame has conducted research on green and cool roofing projects in the city of Chicago. They have found that green and cool roofs help mitigate the heat in cities; however, these roofs should be installed with other strategies like ponds and trees.

Beekeeping is on the rise in Paris, with over 1,000 hives already actively counted in city limits and beekeeping classes enrolled to maximum capacity. Although motives differentiate between beekeepers, all efforts are beneficial to the environment since the species is responsible for pollinated nearly a third of the world's crops.

Bees play a vital role in the health of not just the ecosystem, but also economic development. Keeping honey production local helps to maintain this relationship with the rapidly decreasing species, which is why a group of four individuals in Grand County, Colorado started their own local honey production company.

As bee populations continue to decrease, beekeepers and scientists are left searching for solutions to sustain the colonies that are left. One possible solution may be adding probiotics to the bee's diet. Similar to the way humans react to foods high in probiotics, the supplement appears to boost the bees' immune system and increase their resiliency to various pathogens.

Pollinators such as honeybees are critical to the ecosystem and to agriculture - responsible for pollinating about 1/3 of the nation's food crops - but they are endangered due to factors such as habitat loss and fungus that spreads more rapidly in warming temperatures. A program in Maryland is training adopted dogs to more efficiently sniff out harmful bacteria in bee hives and help preserve their populations.

Bees and other pollinator populations have been rapidly declining, threatening food production nationwide, but urban beekeeping is helping to fight against this trajectory. In Philadelphia, rooftop beekeeping has become the norm for one section of the city, where the honey harvested goes directly to the businesses in the area.

With the bee population decreasing from 6 million hives to about 2.5 million hives since the 1940s, there has been an increase in discussion around the necessity of bees to the ecosystem. To help play their part in sustaining this vulnerable population, community members in Detroit formed a non-profit that cultivates urban beehives while partnering with small businesses to promote the use of the bees' honey.

Concerned with colony collapse syndrome in honey bees worldwide, scientists, farmers and tech companies teamed up in Australia to create a micro-sensor that collects data on the bee's environment.

The use of local and native pollinators can greatly increase farm productivity. In the region of Sosorgon, in the Philippines, farmers who have begun using the local kiwot bees to pollinate coconut farms have noted significant increases in their yields. The Balay Buhau sa Uma Bee Farm (BBu) serves as a demo farm for the broader beeping project in the municipality of Bulusan, which aims to help farmers earn more in a sustainable fashion. This includes encouraging courses in apiculture and the use of affordable, low maintenance hives.

A new solar array called North Star in the Twin Cities will soon produce enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes. The project allows landowners to evolve beyond a deteriorating farming industry while maintaining native prairie plants under and around the panels for bees and other pollinators. The project is part of the state's 15-year energy plan to reduce carbon emissions by 60 percent and generate a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

After taking a year off, the Lafayette Farmers Market in Colorado is back in action and piloting a new type of incentive program that is based on guaranteed-minimum sales for participating farmers. A first of its kind, this program aims to act as a safety net for farmers during the market season by encouraging a community-supported agriculture system.

In California's Ventura County, the Oxnard Plain aquifer is critically over-drafted. Farmers who rely on this water are working to implement a novel, market-based approach to decrease water use: a cap and trade. While the program has the support of many farmers and at least one environmental group, aspects of the mechanism still need ironing out.

Through creative financing and new technology, a non-profit in San Francisco is making farmers markets more accessible to residents who rely on federal nutrition benefits.

While farmers’ markets popularity has increased in the last decade, the higher prices mitigate equal access to such provisions -- and, by extension, the health benefits. As a result, non-profits and farmers' markets across New Hampshire are collaborating with a state program, Granite State Market Watch, to enable low-income food stamp recipients to use the markets. The state matches every dollar worth of stamps, providing needed purchasing power to enjoy the fresh bounty as well as an increased customer base and revenue stream for the local farmers.

When the Women’s Rural Entrepreneurial Network pulled their farmers market out of the town of Berlin, New Hampshire, they took away the town’s one gathering place and also an economic asset. In reaction, a group of women came together to establish an alternative. The Berlin Community Market has added a new gathering place filled with healthy produce, live music, and community.

Trials for Hope, in conjunction with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, is a nonprofit that provides free farmers markets to underprivileged senior citizens. Trials for Hope receives 10,000 pounds of food in donations to distribute via their network of markets every month, as well as 500 toiletry bags. The organization is now eight years old and has already made a difference in many residents' lives.

A teen-run farmer's market in Parramore, a low-income neighborhood of Orlando, gets children off the streets and into the garden. As a branch of the neighborhood's Kidz Zone program, the farmer's market brings fresh food to a former food desert, all while reducing juvenile arrest and teen pregnancy rates.

Small farmers in Indiana are working together to "manage the spaces they share, and to use those resources to improve their community by growing healthy food, and distributing that food to the people around them." Although the efforts started with a retiree population, young adults are now joining in, and the coop is gaining attention from economists and universities.

Farm incubators provide aspiring farmers with training, land, and access to business networks. Across the United States, organizations like California’s Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) are working to support small farmers by serving as small farm incubators. Following a ten-month training course for aspiring farmers, ALBA allows the fledgling entrepreneurs to rent land at below-market rates while they expand their businesses.

The creation, support and development of farmers' markets around the United States lends itself to the economic empowerment of women and minority growers. From Seattle to Philadelphia, these small public markets make breaking into the food business accessible to more people on the economic scale, a hard goal to accomplish for larger grocery store chains.

The effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and hotter global temperatures, are already having drastic impact on many communities, especially the rural, agricultural regions of countries such as Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Mozambique. Earthrise explores how people in these communities are learning new skills, implementing new techniques, and are striving in every way possible to adapt to these environmental changes while creating hope for sustainable growth in the future.

In a small town south of Seattle an organization called Living Well Kent, made up of immigrants, refugees, and people of color who dominate the region, decided that the best way to promote health in their area would be to start a farmers' market. Now, immigrant farmers grow crops in previously abandoned greenhouses to supply the farmers market and support the local food bank.

A group of agriculture producers think new, low-cost growing techniques, high-value crops and an increased interest in local produce offer solutions to New Mexico’s food struggles.

Farmers in California increasingly face water shortages. To help solve the problem, some are looking to Australia, where a national water market has provided an economic solution. By buying and selling water rights, farmers have incentives to reduce consumption.

International development organization One Acre Fund opts to set up shop in rural locations like Bungoma, Kenya rather than major cities like New York and Nairobi and treat its stakeholders as customers instead of beneficiaries. This non-profit's business-like approach has helped it grow from 5,000 farm families in 2006 to 125,000 in 2012, and around 99 percent of families repay their farm loans. As One Acre Fund farmers sell their excess produce, they can invest in basic necessities like education for their children.

A Kenyan government initiative is helping a growing community of residents to tackle food insecurity in one of the largest slum areas in Africa, championing an unusual form of urban farming: sack gardens.

The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership develops enterprises that foster sustainable economic development, focusing especially on empowering farmers and women.

As the population of urban areas in Uganda grows, many farmers are finding that they are running out of space to cultivate successful business in agriculture. One solution that has surfaced has been to build up instead of out.