The potential of green facades (GFs) to enhance environmental justice (EJ) has not been quantified so far. EJ in Berlin, Germany is assessed by the core indicators (1) noise pollution, (2) air pollution, (3) bioclimatic stress, (4) provision of green space and (5) social status. Most of the inner city is rated “poorly” in one or multiple indicators. Based on literature and spatial data, status quo and target values are determined for indicators (1)-(4) for an exemplary, highly burdened quarter in Berlin. It is assessed if and how much GFs could potentially improve current EJ levels. The improvements due to GFs to reach target values are assessed in % for day/night and indoor/outdoor settings. It can be shown that installing GFs would improve statuses of the four indicators to different extents, with the biggest enhancement found regarding indicator (3) for indoors at daytime: 52%. Determining factors for the EJ improvement potential of GFs need to be further assessed. This feasible method for increasing the amount of urban green can be helpful for improving life in highly burdened quarters. Therefore, from the point of view of EJ, large-scale implementation of GFs in urban areas is recommended.

The insect crisis, as conservation topic, has historically received little attention among the general public. Yet, the publication “More than 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas” by Hallmann et al. gained vast media coverage in Germany in October 2017. Given the media's known influence on public perception, we investigated (i) whether coverage of this publication increased awareness among the German public for insect die‐off, and (ii) whether it contributed to people's intentions to undertake insect protecting actions. We used Google Trends to examine people's internet activity in Germany in relation to keywords relevant to our research question. A high peak in Google searches for insect die‐off (“Insektensterben”) was indeed visible immediately after the study publication, and search volume remained significantly higher for the following 6 months, confirming that the topic gained attention. Further, searches for the three keywords insect hotel, bee‐friendly and bee meadow (“Insektenhotel”, “bienenfreundlich”, “Bienenweide”) increased significantly over the summers of the years 2017 to 2019. It appears that increased media attention around insect die‐off spurned by the publication of Hallmann et al not only addressed the crisis but also encouraged implementation of simple insect protection measures by the public. These findings suggest that cooperation between the media, conservation organizations and scientists to disseminate evidence‐based information alongside practical conservation measures may have lasting benefits. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.