“Nature is fundamental for the wellbeing of our society”. With these words Tim Anderson Deputy Mayor for Climate and Environment at the Municipaliy of Odense, Denmark, opened the 10th RECONECT General Assembly that was held in Odense on the 25th — 27th September 2023.
The meeting was participated by all representatives of the RECONECT consortium as well as members of the Advisory Board.
The discussion covered various topics, in particular how to exploit RECONECT results after its end and how to upscale Nature-based Solutions, overcoming the barriers and ensuring a tight committment of stakeholders both from public and private sector. In RECONECT social aspects are fundamental, and one of the main issues is “how do we improve biodiversity and ecosystems at the same time as people are being protected from flooding and landslides? How can we transmit the sense of security to inhabitants?”
Sound scientific data and results from monitoring and evaluation of indicators are fundamental to properly communicate with stakeholders and convince them on the effectiveness of NbS compared to grey interventions.
During the 3-day meeting, an inspiring workshop on the implementation of NbS was organized by RAMBOLL, during wich RECONECT partners were asked to re-design an area at risk in order to mitigate the impacts by hydro-meteo events through NbS.
The meeting was also an opportunity to speak about training seen as an important tool to transfer knowledge and experience from the project to potential users, and to make them train other stakeholders. After the successful initiave of RECONECT webinars (www.reconect.eu/webinars) the University of Exeter announced the next launch of a MOOC on Nature Based Solutions, freely accessible by spring 2024.
The 3-day General Assembly was ended with a site visit to the Seden Strand, Odense Demonstrator A, guided by local partners Odense Municipality and Amphi. This is one of 10 flood-prone areas in Denmark, threatened by flooding due to sea level rise and represent a perfect combination of minimizing flood risk of the suburban and agricultural areas, improving habitat quality and birds presence and conserving the valuable coastal landscape. In this demonstrator NbS construction consisted of a dune protecting the Odense fjord from costal flooding, originally built at a shorter distance from the sea that, during RECONECT, was moved further inland with the creation of several co-benerfits as agricultural and recreational areas, meadows, marshlands and a consequent notable increase in biodiversity.
The interest from Danish institution in NbS was also demostrateed during the RECONECT National Workshop on “nature-based solutions for handling the climate and biodiversity crises” that took place on 24–25 August 2023 in Aarhus, just one month before the General Assembly organized by the partners Aarhus Municipality, Odense Municipality, Amphi International and Rambøll.
The program of the workshop included, among others, the experiences from the Reconect project areas in Aarhus and Odense and reporting of results from monitoring the effect on nature, water and people , as well as presentation of studies on the potential for binding and uptake of CO2 on salt marshes and in lakes. An excursion to the RECONECT site of Egå Engsø and Lystrup was also planned. The round table was focused on the possibility of creating synergy and opportunities for scaling up the implemented NbS at national level.
The workshop audience was composed, in particular, by both nature and climate workers in municipalities, the state, consultancy firms and universities.
