The tie between money and environmental
performance, however, looks set to grow
stronger as a result of the current economic
downturn. Ms Väkevä notes that even relatively
well-off Helsinki has little money to devote to the expansion of current environmental efforts.
The city portraits for this report note specifically
that cities as far apart as Dublin, Budapest and
Belgrade are likely to scale back because of current
economic troubles, and others will doubtless
be doing so as well. It remains to be seen
how cities will balance maximising the benefits
of enhanced environmental performance while
minimising the financial costs in the near term.