Genk - NbS bridging green and industrial heritage

Several dozen NGOs and hundreds of citizens are directly involved in nature-based solutions initiatives. Several projects have recruited additional personnel, leading to several dozen additional employees. An increasingly strong evidence base shows the positive effects of access to green spaces on social cohesion in the city.

Urban farming (Modeltuin Genk Noord)

The initial objective of this initiative was to increase social interaction, including involving many non-ethnic Belgians, to create a stronger sense of identity, belonging and community. At the same time, this project involves the local community in green space management on a former abandoned railway area. The local production of food reduces food costs. Providing access to more green spaces for Genk’s population also relieves the recreational pressure on areas with more sensitive biodiversity. Social learning about urban ecosystems focuses on the non-use of pesticides, which reduces local pollution.

Bee Plan (Bijenplan)

The main focus of this project is to increase the availability of green areas in the city (including local ecological restoration of nature) and reduce pesticides, thereby providing a healthier environment for pollinators and enhancing the adaptability of the pollinator population. The project also contributes to ecosystem connectivity and carbon sequestration. The presence of more green areas in the city relieves the recreational pressure on more sensitive areas.

Green Corridor - Stiemerbeek Valley

The creation of a green-blue artery in the Stiemerbeek Valley has ecological, climatological and recreational objectives. This green corridor will better connect landscapes and areas with high value nature. Additional benefits include more evapotranspiration, less heat stress, greater carbon storage capacity (carbon sequestration), better infiltration and air purification. The creation of green corridors in the city also provides an opportunity for local ecological restoration. The additional green space will also be used for recreation, sport and leisure activities, improving health. Bike paths will reduce the use of public transport (and thus energy consumption).

Heempark

Heempark is a miniature model of the agricultural landscape as it used to be. Organic farming here provides locally-produced food without the use of pesticides. The park also offers a recreational area and playground for children, diverting recreational use from areas with more sensitive biodiversity. The park increases biodiversity and encourages community engagement, acting as a meeting place for different socio-economic profiles.  Local ecological restoration increases carbon sequestration and storage.

Nature-based solutions are an integral part of Genk’s multi-annual strategic plan, without being an objective in themselves. Rather, they are an instrument for increasing the social cohesion between the very diverse socio-economic population groups living in Genk.

Many small nature-based solution projects in Genk have been initiated by the local community.

The local government, building on a strong history of social innovation, is committed to cultivating a pioneering culture of transformation, co-creation and empowerment. The administrative agreement ‘Creating the city together’ enables citizen engagement, participation and bottom-up initiatives. To that end, the government is investing in institutional innovation by organising learning for transitions and systems change, setting up a cross-departmental transition team and investing in long-term support structures, like the district management team, to connect and align bottom-up and top-down dynamics. 

On 3 and 4 March 2013 Genk, organized G360, a citizens' brainstorming session, asking its citizens to come up with smart, innovative and daring ideas to inspire the city council when further developing its multi-annual strategic plan.

The FP7 project ARTS developed close links with stakeholders, policy makers and users outside the consortium. They contacted and studied about 90 initiatives in Genk that are concerned in one way or another with sustainability.

Citizens of Genk are directly involved in several projects, for example by actively participating in the creation of flower meadows in their gardens, installing bee hotels, and practicing urban farming.

Most of the small-scale projects have the potential to generate limited economic opportunities and green jobs. However, due to the large number of projects, the number of economic opportunities and green jobs created can be seen as considerable (a few dozens of jobs created, no economic figures available). Some initiatives even influence the wider economic system beyond the city boundaries via positive spillover effects and outward replication.

One indirect effect is more social interaction, including many non-ethnic Belgians, giving them an improved sense of identity and a feeling of belonging to the community. This social interaction often leads to better integration in the community and more job opportunities.

While the local governance context is currently favourable for accelerating sustainability dynamics, it remains very fragile with a number of barriers hindering the scaling of more sustainable ways of thinking, doing and organising. Transformative change trajectories also entail tensions that require conscious reflection and new ways of balancing trade-offs. 

• Transition entrepreneurs are rare in the city and run the risk of being overburdened. 
• Transition initiatives often struggle to reach citizens outside the local sustainability scene, especially those with foreign roots, young people and citizens who are not highly educated.
• The growing prevalence of an austerity discourse impedes acceleration dynamics, cutting resources and fuelling uncertainty and competition.
• Most transition initiatives depend on external support and are thus quite vulnerable when the context changes.
• Cross-domain and cross-sector initiatives are rare, although they can generate additional value and more efficient use of resources. 
• Organisation and coordination between initiatives is still underdeveloped. 
• Despite the intention to promote a pioneering mentality, several policy approaches and governmental arrangements are still strongly grounded in old ways of thinking, doing and organising, so not well equipped to incorporate novelties. This hampers more systemic change by maintaining silo and sectoral thinking and compartmentalisation. 
• Environmental sustainability is regarded as a distinct policy program, reflecting the outdated paradigm 'nature-versus-economy'. Accordingly, it is not yet embedded in city-making practice, which hampers discourse of genuine transformation. 

On 24th October 2012 Ford, the car manufacturer, announced the closure of its manufacturing plant in Genk.

This has driven Genk into new economic pathways. The city council decided to use Genk’s natural and human capital for sustainable value creation. The city's multi-annual plan describes a strategic vision for the future of Genk. Driven by the ambition to become Belgium's capital of sustainability, Genk is focusing on a large set of innovative projects linked to its central theme of sustainability. To achieve this, Genk is collaborating with European, regional, provincial and local authorities and organisations. Making use of the subsidies available on those levels, Genk is also participating in FP7 (ARTS) and H2020 projects (funding applied) linking scientific questions to the many projects tackling sustainability, including nature-based solutions.

The green-blue corridor that Genk is developing in the Valley of the Stiemerbeek is co-funded by the Interreg project Green4Grey, which stands for ‘green and blue infrastructure for grey peri-urban landscapes'. With this Life+ project, the Flemish Land Agency is investing, together with partners, in the design and development of green and blue landscape elements in the Flemish belt around Brussels and in 'De Wijers', a pond and valley system in the peri-urban area Hasselt-Genk.

No actual monitoring or evaluation system is in place to understand whether nature-based initiatives are succeeding. The FP7 project ARTS was the first to summarise all existing projects and give an indication of how successful they are.

EU research and innovation projects are systematically linked to local initiatives to give them additional scientific and technological support for achieving their goals. The ARTS project (FP7) developed an acceleration roadmap, supporting the city to govern its activities aimed at accelerating the sustainability transition. Although what is considered “sustainable” will always be defined differently by different groups of actors in society, the acceleration roadmap is designed to facilitate relevant reflection, negotiation, learning and collaboration in a constructive and productive way. It is attuned to the local context in Genk, building on both local knowledge and the local sustainability dynamics.