The team at the Research Innovation Unit attended the 4th Progress Meeting of JUSTNature between the 10th and 13th of October 2023 in Leuven, Belgium.

Day 1

The progress meeting kicked off with a dedicated session for the 2nd Collaborative CIPEL Workshop (CCW) coordinated by our partner, Prospex Institute. Participants discussed the challenges encountered in citizen engagement workshops conducted in each city during this workshop. Representatives from Leuven(Belgium), Gzira (Malta), Munich (Germany), Szombathely (Hungary), Merano & Bolzano (Italy) and Chania (Greece) came together to discuss and identify several barriers. It became evident that each city needs effective communication strategies to tackle language barriers and ways to incentivise people to participate. Using the local language and organising separate engagement for individuals speaking different languages became evident.

The meeting progressed with 2 workshops on Power Dynamics and Usability of the indicator framework.

Day 2

The morning session of Day 2 continued on the CCW programme, where we focused on two engaging workshops. The first workshop, led by the Technical University of Munich, centred on developing Co-governance indicators based on the theory of change.

The next workshop focused on the Twinning activities. Its primary purpose is to aid the dissemination of JUSTNature, achieve engagement of wider audiences, and enable a wide-scale replication of effective NBS.

“To shape our cities and make them more sustainable and liveable for the community by ensuring a just transition to low-carbon cities through nature-based solutions”

Day 3

Day 3 featured a visit to the pilot site on Constantin Meunierstraat in Leuven. We explored the current monitoring phase of the temporary nature-based intervention. ”The street of the future” is equipped with sensors to track user interactions and traffic monitoring to gather valuable data for replication.

The day progressed with essential updates from WP leaders, such as :

  • CiPEL operationalisation
  • Implementation frameworks
  • Ecological justice strategic planning toolkit and Socio-ecological profiles
  • Digital twin developments, etc

Day 4

On day 4, our project coordinator presented a peer review process and the recommendations from the European Commission review.

The Technical University of Munich, ABUD and ISOCAP reported completing the assessment period and will progress to a new task called Nature-building Communities. City partners were also introduced to the co-governance concept to help define achievable goals.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 101003757