Haifa, Israel's third largest city and northern capital, is situated in a broad natural bay of the Mediterranean Sea and the forested Carmel Mountains. SPNI's Haifa initiatives include:

Public Participation in Planning (PPP) - SPNI-Haifa's PPP program provides support, advice and encouragement to residents interested in getting involved in local planning processes. The SPNI Haifa branch provides a professional, timely response to environmental problems, especially opposing governmental bodies and planning commissions, in addition to assembling a coalition of 16 environmental organizations and various action committees in and around the city.

Coalition Efforts - Through "Derech Haifa" (The Haifa Way) volunteers work with professional planners, decision-makers, local government and city council members and the local planning commission to promote sustainable development.

Population - SPNI-Haifa facilitates resident involvement in the city's new Master Plan and in diversified and heterogeneous neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods are known for their social complexity, derived from both the multi-ethnic (Jewish and Arabs) and low socio-economic status of its population.

The implementation of PPP in Haifa is crucial to the future of this unique city, a city that serves as a model for an accomplished ethnically, religiously and culturally heterogeneous city and above all a symbol of successful co-existence. These diverse groups, living in different neighborhoods of Haifa, have been forced to cope with environmental hazards, the unwanted afterbirth of unbridled development completely deficient of strategy regarding regional and environmental planning.

A major project of SPNI-Haifa is the Wadi Project Haifa's topography is characterized by mountains and wadis, which must be preserved. Five wadis were chosen for concentrated restoration efforts in 2004-2005: Stella-Maris, Lotem, Sheikh, Ahuza and Remez-Ziv. SPNI a ctivities involve :

• Orienteering courses and youth groups adopting wadis
• Restoration of neglected hiking trails
• Encouraging the public to explore the wadis
• Pooling urban resources to cultivate the wadis
• Developing a monitoring and control system for damages inflicted and for reporting them in real-time