Third stakeholder meeting in Poland
The third meeting of the Regional Stakeholders Group for 'NACAO -Nature-based Carbon Offsets' project took place at the headquarters of Marshal Office of Świętokrzyskie Region in Poland. That was a great opportunity to welcome new stakeholders who joined the group (Brody Municipality) and introduce Nacao project and the assumptions of lnterreg Europe programme rules and possibilities.
Mrs. Anna Kucharczyk, deputy director of the Regional Development Department opened the meeting by drawing attention to climate change and the need to take into consideration all possible action to protect the environment. She raised the importance of the NACAO project in the context of the implementation of the regional development policy of "Healthy Europe". To reduce global climate change, we must not only rapidly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but also look for effective methods to sequester it, that is, to capture and store it. International partners of the EU's NACAO project learn about an share good practices in this topic through i.e. Finnish, German, French, Italian or Spanish experience, because it is in such a group that the Świętokrzyskie region
has been implementing project activities for more than a year.
Representatives of institutions related to nature and climate protection (the regional stakeholders) together with employees of Marshal Office who implement the project directly participated in meetings, workshops and study visits, during which they learned about effective methods of nature-based carbon offsetting. During the III semester participated in III Thematic Seminar in France in June 2024 that is why during the meeting there were presented all good practices from that event. The catalog of good practices includes, for example, restoring green areas around schools and creating school gardens, reforesting cities, monitoring the proper use of food in public kindergartens, converting public transportation to an electric fleet and promoting multi-family wooden housing.
Also Polish experiences were presented within the frames of the project by the representative of National Forests Mr Jacek Koba: "Forests for Wetlands" and "Forest Carbon Farms". The latter are places where, through skillful planting, avoiding soil damage and increasing the amount of biomass, foresters enhance the natural capacity of forests to absorb CO2. One hectare of forest absorbs about 4 tons of it annually. The second project focuses on the special protection of wet soils and water conditions within forest and wetland habitats. 100,000 hectares of land (6,000 hectares in Świętokrzyskie) are to be covered by these measures.
During the third meeting in Kielce, the regional partners had the opportunity to get acquainted with, among other things, the assumptions of the Climate Change Adaptation Pian of the City of Kielce
until 2030. They also learned about the work schedule for the next semester of project implementation. A study visit to Germany, in Bremen is planned, and then - in June 2025 - the organization of a seminar at home in the region.
