JUSTNature Consortium and Progress Meeting 2, Chania

The team at Research Innovation Unit attended the 2^nd Progress Meeting of JUSTNature between the 10^th and the 12^th of October 2022 in Chania, Crete.

Day 1

The progress and consortium meeting started with an intense stakeholder engagement training session consisting of a citizen engagement strategy, a facilitation toolkit and an empathy session. The project leader of JUSTNature, Dr Sonja Gantioler, welcomed the project partners (a consortium of academics, local government administrators/representatives and business partners) and officially inaugurated the start of the progress meeting. European Commission Project Advisor Piret Noukas gave valuable insights to attendees on the European Commission’s ongoing work and the European Green Deal.

The meeting progressed with the PechaKucha (the sound of conversation or chit-chat in Japanese), being a back-to-back presentation by all project partners with an automated timer per slide and 15 slides per partner. The introduction of the PechaKucha proved very efficient for the tight and intense progress meeting schedule as it allowed table workshops to bridge academics with city representatives (CiPeLs) on new workflow concepts.

Day 2

The morning session of Day 2 focused on table sessions on CiPeLs Data and Monitoring followed by insights from Work Package 3, 2 and 6. CiPeLs Co-Governance table workshop ensued with insights from Work Package 7, 4 and 8. The afternoon session progressed with Innovating & Upscaling JUSTNature results:

• What about Communication and Dissemination of results?
• JUSTNature’s 4 innovation strands.
• What about business?
• Project Governance.
• Project ethics.
• Horizon Scanning session.

Day 3

Day 3 featured a walk-through Chania, visit to the municipality office and a visit to the project pilot site of Chania.