Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CONEXUS (CO-producing Nature-based solutions and restored Ecosystems: transdisciplinary neXus for Urban Sustainability)
Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2023-08-31
Cities and regions in Europe and Latin America (CELAC) face shared and urgent global-local challenges to integrate practical actions with strategies to achieve greater inclusion, biodiversity, climate change adaptation and environmental quality.
CONEXUS brings together community, private, public and research partners to experiment with novel co-production methods to deliver context-appropriate NBS innovations in ‘Life-Lab’ pilots (in São Paulo, Bogotá, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Barcelona and Torino). It seeks to solve problems together with citizens by using a place-based approach. Our website is: www.conexusnbs.com.
Many cities share problems of landscape fragmentation caused by rapid growth, urban sprawl and economic restructuring. Poorly planned urbanisation leaves a legacy of cities lacking the green areas needed for ecosystems to provide the services essential to human life. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have the potential to help reverse these trends, and our combined palette of socio-cultural, ecological and governance contexts represents a huge opportunity to move forward - faster, together.
Conexus will co-produce, structure and promote access to the shared, contextualised knowledge needed to support cities and communities to co-create NBS and restore urban ecosystems, and to help drive the required step-change in urban policy and practice. This transdisciplinary project uses nature-based thinking mindsets to bring together partners and stakeholders to help meet this challenge, and experiments with NBS innovations in the 7 life-labs and beyond.
CONEXUS brings together community, private, public and research partners to experiment with novel co-production methods to deliver context-appropriate NBS innovations in ‘Life-Lab’ pilots (in São Paulo, Bogotá, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Barcelona and Torino). It seeks to solve problems together with citizens by using a place-based approach. Our website is: www.conexusnbs.com.
Many cities share problems of landscape fragmentation caused by rapid growth, urban sprawl and economic restructuring. Poorly planned urbanisation leaves a legacy of cities lacking the green areas needed for ecosystems to provide the services essential to human life. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have the potential to help reverse these trends, and our combined palette of socio-cultural, ecological and governance contexts represents a huge opportunity to move forward - faster, together.
Conexus will co-produce, structure and promote access to the shared, contextualised knowledge needed to support cities and communities to co-create NBS and restore urban ecosystems, and to help drive the required step-change in urban policy and practice. This transdisciplinary project uses nature-based thinking mindsets to bring together partners and stakeholders to help meet this challenge, and experiments with NBS innovations in the 7 life-labs and beyond.
The project involves 7 live work packages, on communication, contextualisation, implementation, analysis, valorisation, sharing/learning, and leadership.
Conexus engaged stakeholders to share evidence and best practice, maximising impact potential, increasing skills, involving wider audiences, moving curricula, and assisting cities with NBS (>2400 participant engagements; >70 events, virtual workshops, meetings, dialogues, talks, training).
Focusing on NBS in contexts we are building shared understanding of settings, barriers and responses, establishing what may be transferable and what depends on geo-political contexts. Project case studies are all freely available and easy to find on Oppla; further in-depth analysis tackled integration, comparing planning cultures and governance contexts, and key trends, options and futures for NBS implementation.
We established 7 transdisciplinary city life-labs, providing for strategic learning and ecosystem restoration via city-led pilots (urban food and amenity, sustainable water management, river corridor restoration, urban heat and air quality amelioration; all seek to understand environmental justice and biodiversity credentials of NBS). This entails monitoring, measuring and modelling NBS impacts and processes. We are analysing interventions at the macro-, meso- and micro-scales (physical manifestations, social processes, contexts and benefits), involving all sectors of society. Building on the EC impact assessment handbook (2021) and Eklipse framework (2017), we developed a participatory framework to understand NBS co-benefits, and assessed the use of existing guidance to understand key gaps to fill via our own future guidelines.
NBS impact indicators are also linked with societal and economic values. We appraised valuation approaches based on the state of the art, cities' experiences, and the wider literature. This will later support valorisation of NBS business cases, programmes, and projects with communities and investors.
Internally, great emphasis is placed on sharing, learning and clustering, building common infrastructure and capacity for knowledge exchange, and sharing resources (monthly meetings, >30 participants) with results being harvested to generate impactful products from strategic lessons learned.
Conexus engaged stakeholders to share evidence and best practice, maximising impact potential, increasing skills, involving wider audiences, moving curricula, and assisting cities with NBS (>2400 participant engagements; >70 events, virtual workshops, meetings, dialogues, talks, training).
Focusing on NBS in contexts we are building shared understanding of settings, barriers and responses, establishing what may be transferable and what depends on geo-political contexts. Project case studies are all freely available and easy to find on Oppla; further in-depth analysis tackled integration, comparing planning cultures and governance contexts, and key trends, options and futures for NBS implementation.
We established 7 transdisciplinary city life-labs, providing for strategic learning and ecosystem restoration via city-led pilots (urban food and amenity, sustainable water management, river corridor restoration, urban heat and air quality amelioration; all seek to understand environmental justice and biodiversity credentials of NBS). This entails monitoring, measuring and modelling NBS impacts and processes. We are analysing interventions at the macro-, meso- and micro-scales (physical manifestations, social processes, contexts and benefits), involving all sectors of society. Building on the EC impact assessment handbook (2021) and Eklipse framework (2017), we developed a participatory framework to understand NBS co-benefits, and assessed the use of existing guidance to understand key gaps to fill via our own future guidelines.
NBS impact indicators are also linked with societal and economic values. We appraised valuation approaches based on the state of the art, cities' experiences, and the wider literature. This will later support valorisation of NBS business cases, programmes, and projects with communities and investors.
Internally, great emphasis is placed on sharing, learning and clustering, building common infrastructure and capacity for knowledge exchange, and sharing resources (monthly meetings, >30 participants) with results being harvested to generate impactful products from strategic lessons learned.
Wild et al. (2020) report 7 knowledge gap priorities to provide a basis to understand progress and the state of the art, as follows. (1) Investment in NBS and underpinning R&I; (2) policy- and governance- research; (3) technically oriented scientific research; (4) policy development and associated advocacy; (5) co-production of educational programmes and initiatives; (6) economic and financial instruments; (7) decision support systems, tools and models. This is used to report and classify key innovations and expected results in Conexus (in brackets as no.1 etc).
We reached board audiences, through >2400 participant engagements (sectors: science/research - 35%; cities/regions - 18%; SME/business - 5%; NGO/civil society - 12%; public - 5%; policy/networks - 22%; other - 3%). A strong focus has been on policy, advocacy and cooperation (no.4) with Conexus inputs at NetworkNature, COP26, EU Week of Regions and Cities, UNEP governmental training, EU-Brazil Sector Dialogues, Mercociudades, UrbanbyNature, Nature of Cities, and Biodivercities. Groundbreaking work engaged with non-standard audiences, e.g. educators and scholars (no.2; no.5) e.g. joint hosting of the Studienstiftung Kolleg Europa Lisbon programme, scholars priorities for NBS education; contributions to 'Let Nature be the Solution' engaging teachers; keynote at CLEA /CESCA 'Tejiendo Paisajes' students workshop.
We provide rich cases of NBS in contexts (nos. 2, 4, 6) here: >2000 visits. Deeper analyses followed on governance and planning processes in 7 cities, evaluating characteristics of NBS in place, space, time and actor networks. This brings together EU and CELAC approaches, enables benchmarking and improves prospects for transnational NBS programmes and interventions.
Nature-based thinking is being trialled as a mindset to embed NBS and deepen transformations in urban environments and sustainability (nos.2,4; Randrup, Buijs, Konijnendijk & Wild (2020), 29 citations), supplemented by innovative business models e.g. participatory budgeting (Falanga, Verheij, & Bina, 2021)
Conexus drove up investment in NBS capacities and delivery (nos. 1,4, 6, 7); and made good progress despite Covid. Our life-labs provided strategic learning alliances and supported city-level NBS programmes. We involved citizens, academics, public, private and third sector partners (e.g. city/ regional government staff: >900 hrs contact, 30+ participants). Each life-lab has terms of reference and an action plan, strengthening legitimacy, accountability, and co-productive innovation prospects (nos. 1,2, 3, 7). With Covid restrictions being lifted, data collection and physical demonstrators are gathering pace.
We developed innovative decision support systems, tools and models (no.7; no.3) and researched the use of NBS guidance; see https://www.iale2022.eu/iale-2022-symposia-theme9-R3.html. Our participatory impact monitoring process seeks to enable societal application of NBS indicators. The findings show how greater sensitivity to local conditions offer the potential to better inform urban decision-making and planning, especially if impact frameworks are developed iteratively, addressing interconnections between institutions, diverse communities and the environment. This offers improved prospects to measure NBS benefits, including: biodiversity, urban liveability, climate change resilience, social inclusion and cohesion, regeneration (green economy, employment and place identity), and public health and wellbeing (physical and mental).
We reached board audiences, through >2400 participant engagements (sectors: science/research - 35%; cities/regions - 18%; SME/business - 5%; NGO/civil society - 12%; public - 5%; policy/networks - 22%; other - 3%). A strong focus has been on policy, advocacy and cooperation (no.4) with Conexus inputs at NetworkNature, COP26, EU Week of Regions and Cities, UNEP governmental training, EU-Brazil Sector Dialogues, Mercociudades, UrbanbyNature, Nature of Cities, and Biodivercities. Groundbreaking work engaged with non-standard audiences, e.g. educators and scholars (no.2; no.5) e.g. joint hosting of the Studienstiftung Kolleg Europa Lisbon programme, scholars priorities for NBS education; contributions to 'Let Nature be the Solution' engaging teachers; keynote at CLEA /CESCA 'Tejiendo Paisajes' students workshop.
We provide rich cases of NBS in contexts (nos. 2, 4, 6) here: >2000 visits. Deeper analyses followed on governance and planning processes in 7 cities, evaluating characteristics of NBS in place, space, time and actor networks. This brings together EU and CELAC approaches, enables benchmarking and improves prospects for transnational NBS programmes and interventions.
Nature-based thinking is being trialled as a mindset to embed NBS and deepen transformations in urban environments and sustainability (nos.2,4; Randrup, Buijs, Konijnendijk & Wild (2020), 29 citations), supplemented by innovative business models e.g. participatory budgeting (Falanga, Verheij, & Bina, 2021)
Conexus drove up investment in NBS capacities and delivery (nos. 1,4, 6, 7); and made good progress despite Covid. Our life-labs provided strategic learning alliances and supported city-level NBS programmes. We involved citizens, academics, public, private and third sector partners (e.g. city/ regional government staff: >900 hrs contact, 30+ participants). Each life-lab has terms of reference and an action plan, strengthening legitimacy, accountability, and co-productive innovation prospects (nos. 1,2, 3, 7). With Covid restrictions being lifted, data collection and physical demonstrators are gathering pace.
We developed innovative decision support systems, tools and models (no.7; no.3) and researched the use of NBS guidance; see https://www.iale2022.eu/iale-2022-symposia-theme9-R3.html. Our participatory impact monitoring process seeks to enable societal application of NBS indicators. The findings show how greater sensitivity to local conditions offer the potential to better inform urban decision-making and planning, especially if impact frameworks are developed iteratively, addressing interconnections between institutions, diverse communities and the environment. This offers improved prospects to measure NBS benefits, including: biodiversity, urban liveability, climate change resilience, social inclusion and cohesion, regeneration (green economy, employment and place identity), and public health and wellbeing (physical and mental).