Meeting report from the second Thematic Seminar
Nature-based carbon offsets consortium met second time 20.-22.2.2024. This time the Central Finland Region organised a meeting. Due to winter, the meeting was scheduled for as late February as possible, as the amount of daylight was longer than in December or January. Winter also offered its best for the guests and there was approx. 50 cm of snow on the ground during the visit. This was especially memorable in the site visit, in Saarijärvi municipality.
Our meeting followed a familiar formula. The program started with a warm welcome on the part of the Regional Council Director of Regional Development followed by an appealing intro to the territory framing the meeting provided by the local coordinator of NACAO in Central Finland. An introduction to NACAO project followed, conducted by Lead Partner representative, the purpose being making the partners, the stakeholders and other guests in the event familiar with the project and the program. The particularities of Interreg Europe and also those of our NACAO project were emphasised.
A round of presentations on the part of each partner organisation and their stakeholders followed. This led to mutual knowledge prior to starting the exchange of good practices, contributing to create a favorable atmosphere for it. Next, we shared our good practices to each other:
- Roadmap for carbon neutrality (Regional Council of Central Finland, FINLAND)
- Marathon of biodiversity AURA-EE, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, FRANCE)
- Project CO2 Stored in Forests Management (Marche Region, ITALY)
- Renaturalization of the inland delta of Nida River (Świętokrzyskie Region, POLAND)
- Protocol for the calculation of the carbon footprint of events (Andalusia, SPAIN)
The Good Practice “Urban greening on private sites through regulatory standards and funding programmes” - to be conveyed by the Ministry for Environment, Climate and Science of the City of Bremen was shared later via remote meeting due to last minute force majeure. After each Good Practice presentation, there was time for questions, clarifications and debate. It was very satisfactory seeing how the practices shared raised the interest of the other partners and of the stakeholders present.
The first day ended with a keynote speaker, Principal Scientist Eemeli Tsupari from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. He offered the partners and stakeholders an overview of “Carbon efficient utilisation of bioresources – two examples of research projects at Jyväskylä”. After that the local partner Central Finland – which is also responsible for coordinating Project Communication – shared the draft video of Aims of NACAO in production. In the evening we had a social dinner in Kuokkala Manor.
The second day of the meeting was site visit day, but first we started with some lectures. The partners met at University of Jyväskylä premises, to participate in a “Case Study Presentation” concerning the collaboration of Jyväskylä City and the University (specifically the School of Resource Wisdom) with regard to “Land-use planning, biodiversity offsetting and climate aspects”.
The partners listened the representative of the University and the land use planning biologist in the Jyväskylä City sharing their reflections and showing real cases on biodiversity offsetting. The audience revealed afterwards that the presentation provided different angles and interesting perspectives to approach the carbon offsetting issue differently. After lunch we headed to the forest: Our site visit was in Saarijärvi forest restoration sites were we visited with experts guiding. This was very valuable for the participants, as they could get to know different experiences in situ but also ask the experts, while enjoying a unique atmosphere in the woods.
Third day of the meeting was dedicated to the steering committee and planning of the next thematic seminar in Lyon, France.