In 2019 the City of Debrecen announced a new environmental policy, one that stands for active environmental protection. Since then we have achieved a great deal: we have planted 10,000 trees, brought the water of the Tisza into the Tócó stream through the Civaqua programme, put green buses into service for the city's residents and, together with the University of Debrecen, created the country's most comprehensive environmental programme, the Green Code.

I am pleased to announce that the Green Sentinel is starting its work in partnership between the University of Debrecen and our city!

Debrecen is a city that builds on its historic past, on the cooperation of its people and on knowledge. This tradition is strengthened by the fact that the Green Sentinel, too, was created with the scientific background provided by the university.

Professors of the University of Debrecen and the city's experts jointly examine environmental impacts on air, water and soil quality, noise pollution, farmland and biodiversity, with state-of-the-art precision equipment, based in Debrecen but with a regional outlook. Alongside the University of Debrecen, experts of the HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research, with three decades of experience in researching atmospheric components, take part in the joint work with instruments that are rare even by world standards.

Safety and development, science and health: these are at the heart of the Green Sentinel's work.

I am convinced that our city's finest experts and most experienced researchers are working to ensure that the people of Debrecen continuously receive reliable, objective and comprehensive information, based on authentic, real test results and up-to-date data, about the state of the environment that determines their health and well-being. In Debrecen, the protection and development of the natural and urban environment go hand in hand with economic development.

Together with the University of Debrecen, we have created the Green Sentinel website, where the people of Debrecen can continuously follow changes in the city's environmental parameters through the measurements, online data and laboratory-based results of the Green Sentinel's 18 monitoring stations. The evaluation processes and the published data series comply with Hungarian and international legal requirements and with the norms and practice of scientific work.

Like the Green Code, the Green Sentinel is a joint success of science and the city, and from now on every resident of Debrecen is part of it!