Conexus
Summary
The EU-funded CONEXUS project co-produced, structured and promoted access to contextualised knowledge by co-creating Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) to support the restoration of urban ecosystems. Cities in Europe and Latin America share urgent global-local challenges to integrate practical actions with strategies to achieve greater inclusion, biodiversity, climate change adaptation and environmental quality.
CONEXUS united community, private, public and research partners to experiment with novel co-production methods to deliver NBS innovations in ‘Life-Lab’ pilots, using a place-based approach to solve problems together with citizens (in São Paulo, Bogotá, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Barcelona and Turin). The combined palette of socio-cultural, ecological and governance contexts presents the opportunity to move forward faster together, and to inform changes in urban policy and practice.
Not sure what we mean by nature based solutions? Watch this two minute video to find out all you need to know.
The Challenge
Cities and regions in Europe (EU) and Community of Latin American & Caribbean States (CELAC) face shared and urgent global-local challenges to integrate practical actions with strategies to achieve greater inclusion, biodiversity, climate change adaptation and environmental quality. Many cities share problems of landscape fragmentation caused by rapid growth, urban sprawl, and economic restructuring. Poorly planned urbanisation leaves a legacy of cities lacking the green areas needed for ecosystems to provide the services essential to human life. NBS have the potential to help reverse these trends, and our combined EU-CELAC palette of socio-cultural, ecological and governance contexts represents a huge opportunity to move forward faster, together.
Objectives
CONEXUS adopted a planetary health perspective: healthy landscapes and ecosystems are vital to support human life, and humanity must restore, create and care for these landscapes and ecosystems in a reciprocal, ongoing, and iterative relationship. This transdisciplinary project used nature-based thinking (NBT) to bring together community, private, public and research partners to meet this challenge, and experiments with novel co-production methods to deliver NBS innovations in ‘Life-Lab’ pilots. The project’s core concept was to co-create context-appropriate NBS for ecosystems restoration and sustainable urbanisation in CELAC and EU cities, using a place-based approach (place-making, place-keeping and place-prescribing), solving problems together with citizens.
Cities Involved:
- São Paulo
- Bogotá
- Santiago
- Buenos Aires
- Lisbon
- Barcelona
- Turin
Outputs
CONEXUS created lots of resources sharing how to restore natural ecosystems and improve the quality of life in and around cities. By making this information accessible, the project continues to help support collaboration between Latin America and Europe even after it's end date.
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