Recovery of biodiversity is extremely important for nature and our wellbeing as humans. The Co – Bio project will develop competences and experts to restore biodiversity, ecosystems and promote new climate and biodiversity friendly practices.
Context
Nowadays we face a biodiversity crisis.
As global populations rise and economies develop, the demands on land-use systems increase. This has resulted in widespread declines in biodiversity and 80 percent of European habitats are in poor condition. We face a crisis, where the recovery of biodiversity is extremely important for nature and our wellbeing as humans. For us to turn back the damages and restore biodiversity, ecosystems and promote new climate and biodiversity friendly practices, we need to engage all parts and sectors in society (OECD 2020; EU Nature Restoration Law; European Green Deal; EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030). Urbanization of previously natural areas is a threat to biodiversity. The remaining green urban spaces are often fragmented and increasingly threatened by the rapid urban growth (Jaeger et al, 2016). On the other hand, we also deal with a lack of competence and guides in term of cohesive measures such as clear guidelines and collaborative measures between the different stakeholders, often result in unsuccessful biodiversity promoting initiatives and policies (Aronson et al, 2017). The Co-Bio project aims to support the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, with the concrete focus of urban biodiversity. The project will develop a guide with relevant knowledge, competences and tools needed for local cross-sector stakeholders to be able to co-create local solutions on urban biodiversity.
Objectives
- Support the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030;
- Focus on the urban biodiversity concretely;
- Develop a guide with relevant knowledge, competences and tools needed for local cross-sector stakeholders to be able to co-create local solutions on urban biodiversity;
- Formulate a training methodology that the partners will use to train themselves as facilitators of local co-creation to implement and test the developed methodology and guide through 6 local case projects.
Activities
- A state-of-the-art and local mapping analysis;
- The formulation of a teaching methodology on facilitation of co-creation and a train-the-trainers workshop;
- The formulation of a guide on local co-creation for urban biodiversity and mobilisation;
- Implementation of the teaching methodology and guide through 6 local cases;
- An in-person and virtual exchanges between the cases;
- A project evaluation on the relevance and impact of the developed outputs and activities.
Resources
- 1 action Plan for the implementation of WP2 – State of the art and local mapping analysis;
- 1 national mapping report per each partner country with results of research of management and governance issues of urban biodiversity and mapping of urban contexts in each country;
- 1 national report per country with summary of results from all the research activities;
- 1 overall EU report providing a summary of the results in each country with specific recommendations for the local projects;
- A guide on the co-creation;
- 6 case studies report, one per partner country.
Impact
- 18 interviews conducted with professionals in urban biodiversity (3/country);
- 6 focus groups involving community residents/citizens who are potential local agents of change and stakeholders carried out in each country (1/country) and involving 30 participants (5/country);
- 18 approaches/initiatives collected as best practices (3/country);
- Number of participants in the local cases (min. 10 per case). Number of sectors represented by the participants in the local cases (min. 2 per case);
- Applicability of the teaching methodology in the 6 different partner settings;
- Promoting communication and increased cooperation between representatives from local municipalities, civil society and private actors through co-creation methodologies as a way to increase the successful implementation of initiatives focused on urban biodiversity in all partner countries and regions;
- Bringing together public and private actors and civil society in such an equal learning and cooperation forum is innovative in the way that it combines the development of competences, shared values, participation, social capital and concrete impact on urban biodiversity.
Partners
- VEJLE KOMMUNE (Denmark) – Coordinator
- Rightchallenge – Associação Center for Borgerdialog (Portugal)
- CESIE (Italy)
- Athens Lifelong Learning Institute (Greece)
- GreenFormation (Hungary)
- Gartenpolylog – GärtnerInnen der Welt kooperieren (Austria)
