VARCITIES joined the NetworkNature EU Taskforces Cluster Meeting in Brussels!

September 28, 2022

The NetworkNature Taskforces Cluster Meeting gathers stakeholders from the European Commission and its research agency as well as projects’ partners from different EU funded NBS and provided opportunities for knowledge sharing , networking and collaboration.

In the morning, the European Commission presented the EU NBS policy context and provided insights on its more recent developments. An overview of the on-going works of each Task Force was then presented. As part of a panel discussion, Varcities and its sister projects were introduced; GoGreenRoutes ​, IN-HABIT, and euPOLIS, focusing on the importance of clustering projects to ensure knowledge-sharing, capacity building and idea-sharing as well as creating a community of practice.

One question asked: How we reach stakeholders is an issue for all projects in NBS, especially those focused on health, because we are more concerned with the privacy of citizen health benefits than perhaps ecosystem services, because of the changing demographic in our cities.

The given solutions and on discussion are implementing inclusive recruitment strategies. For example, in some location, the population has increased between 15 and 20 percent due to war in Ukraine. To address this, “we are ensuring that materials are translated into Ukrainian, so that we can access this new demographic. we are very open for collaboration with our sister projects. GoGreenRoutes ​ was born from a 2017 NBS meeting in Tallinn. If I look around the room, I can name the people we collaborated with across other projects.” – Tadhg MacIntyre, GoGreenRoute project.

In the afternoon, two parallel sessions were organised, the first one focusing the development of a common evaluation framework for NBS projects, while the second session explored the report ‘’The vital role of NSB in a nature-positive economy” which was published by the European Commission.

It is a remarkable day that we are moving towards upscaling Nature-based solutions in both policy & practice!

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Photo Credit: Daniele Fiorentino