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The Green Living Areas Mission’s Thematic Community and Institutional Dialogue have their official kick-off in Turin, Italy!

18/04/2024
On the 10th and 11th April 2024, the Green Living Areas Mission Thematic Community gathered in Turin, Italy, to officially meet in person for the first time. Hosted by Mission partner Environment Park, the event’s aim was to find synergies and common actions between the Community’s 19 projects, all dedicated to promoting green living areas in the Mediterranean. The first day was entirely dedicated to community building, with mutual presentations, a co-creation workshop, and networking activities. The second day, open to the public, allowed for the exchange of best practices related to tools, strategies, and policy instruments for promoting greener territories and engaging citizens in the transition, as well as the official launch of the Institutional Dialogue Process. The event provided the first opportunity for the Community to meet, understand one another’s actions, and ultimately amplify the voice of their projects and impact. The event was organised by Community4LivingAreas with the collaboration of Dialogue4LivingAreas.

The first day was entirely dedicated to community building, with mutual presentations, a co-creation workshop, and networking activities. The second day, open to the public, allowed for the exchange of best practices related to tools, strategies, and policy instruments for promoting greener territories and engaging citizens in the transition, as well as the official launch of the Institutional Dialogue Process. The event provided the first opportunity for the Community to meet, understand one another’s actions, and ultimately amplify the voice of their projects and impact. The event was organised by Community4LivingAreas with the collaboration of Dialogue4LivingAreas.

Empowering thematic projects for greener living: first day recap
The event was inaugurated by Alexia Boulanger, Senior Specialist at the host institution Environment Park. She emphasised the event as the beginning of many actions and meetings the thematic projects will embark on throughout their projects. She gave the floor to Davide Damosso, Operative Director at Environment Park, Danilo Ceh, from Scientific Research Centre Bistra Ptuj and lead partner of Community4LivingAreas, and Judith Cazas, Programme Officer at INTERREG Euro-MED Programme. Their welcoming words encouraged all partners to seize this opportunity to connect and find synergies, thereby amplifying the results and impact of their projects.
Following the welcome, Prof. Guido Saccarro, Politecnico di Torino, gave a motivational speech highlighting the potential of initiatives, such as the thematic projects, in combatting the effects of climate change and finding real solutions to make cities greener, more sustainable, and low-carbon in the Mediterranean region.

After setting the tone for the event, the 19 thematic projects were called to pitch their aims and key expected outcomes over the coming years. The pitches allowed each project to understand the activities of the others and to get to know their other community members. This allowed for the discovery of synergies and potential joint actions between projects to share goals and amplify results and actions.

Following the introductions of each project, the event held the first co-creation workshop: The Ecosystemic Transition Unit Model for Green Living Areas. The discussion on developing a multidimensional integrated framework, fit for the use of the Thematic Projects using a systemic thinking approach was led by Joanna Grodzka, Project Manager at EMEA. The session began with testimonials from both “givers” and “takers” of the ETU model in the previous project, INTERREG MED Renewable Energy. We heard from Greguric Branimir and the Brdovec flagship case, Alexia Boulanger and the Ragusa flagship case, Francesco Filippi from Fundació Mussol, and Andrea Vignoli from ANCI Lazio.
After this introduction and overview of the ETU Model, the thematic projects were split into 5 key themes, organised into dedicated thematic working groups (TWG):

1. Green Mobility
2. Green Energy Systems
3. Green & Climate Change Resilient Spatial Planning
4. Financing the Green Transition
5. Green Community Engagement

They were invited to work directly with the proposal of the ETU model and share what tools and solutions they will develop and who the end users will be. These discussions started an integrated building process to gather the projects’ results and to transfer them through the ETU model to regional and local public authorities and other stakeholders. The Thematic Working Groups will be a staple of the Green Living Areas Mission working in close contact, and meeting regularly, welcoming new Thematic Projects as these join the Mission after the results of upcoming calls.

Policy exchange and collaboration in the Mediterranean: second day recap
The second day, open to policymakers, policy influencers, and other stakeholders, focused on the exchange of best practices related to tools, strategies, and policy instruments for promoting greener territories and engaging citizens in the transition. The first session featured a keynote from Miljenko Sedlar, Head of Climate at REGEA. He discussed the current issues in his region of Croatia on handling climate change effects and mitigation measures in cities, highlighting the need for multi-purpose solutions and investments. The thematic projects, he explained, are key to ensuring the possible solutions are multi-purpose and are taken up widely across the region.
He was joined by 5 panellists, Simone Bastianoni, from the Università degli Studi di Siena discussing neutral territories and presenting the thematic project CO2 Pacman, Andrea Moro discussing Urban Planning & Climate change adaptation, from iiSBE Italia and presenting the thematic project ReMED, Laura Ribotta, presenting ongoing work in Turin on the Green and circular transition, Comune di Torino, Evangelos Fragkakis, Mayor of the Municipality of Halki in Greece, discussing energy communities from the point of view of an island, and Stefano Dotta from Environment Park presenting RECROSSES: One-stop-shop supporting RenewableEnergy Communities. The session described successful actions across the Mediterranean region and marked out future actions to ensure impactful mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change, pushing for the development of green living areas.
Moving on to policymakers’ uptake of solutions, the Dialogue4LivingAreas project launched the Institutional Dialogue Process. Opening the session, Bernard Massabo, Secretary-General of the Euromed Cities Network, Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur, and D4LA, invited all community members and stakeholders to engage in the dialogue to build greener living areas in the Mediterranean.
He then introduced the keynote speaker, Elodie Bossio, Deputy Director at FEDARENE who discussed the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change. She discussed key tools and initiatives on the energy transition for regions and regional energy agencies.

To ensure a holistic approach to green living areas and actions under the INTERREG Euro-MED programme, representatives Alessandro Daraio from Innovative Sustainable Economy Mission and Alexia Spyridonidou from Sustainable Tourism Mission were invited to present their activities and actions. They advocated for collaboration between missions and projects in the Mediterranean to promote innovative, cross-cutting and impactful policymaking. Finally, Diana Zanabria Sequeiros of IREC – Institut de Recerca en Energia de Catalunya, Marina Kouta of the University of Patras, and Cláudia Ribeiro of POLIS Network, D4LA project partners, introduced the dialogue process for policymaking. To spark the dialogue, stakeholders participated in an interactive activity to share experiences and expectations for the coming years of the Green Living Areas Mission.

The final session focused on the key theme of citizen engagement in policy for green living areas. Moderated by Hrvoje Maras and Mihaela Babić from project partner REGEA, we heard from 3 thematic projects: INFIRE with Cristina Daniel, LOGREENER with Yolanda Nicolau, and NUDGES with Eudokia Balamou on their upcoming activities to engage with citizens to promote impactful and collaborative change in Green Living Areas Mission. Following these technical solutions, we heard from stakeholders with experience in citizen involvement in the Euro-Med region, providing insights for the thematic projects. The panellists were Francesco Filippi, Fundación MUSOL, Oliver Gajda, EUROCROWD, Lizeth Lopez, ALDA – European Association for Local Democracy, and Oriana Corino, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo.

The event closed with an interactive activity designed to break down barriers and set forth a pathway for positive collaboration between project partners and thematic projects. The Thematic Community will next meet in person in Barcelona in Spring 2025.

To access all the presentations from Day 1 (10th April) click here. To access all the presentations from Day 2 (11th April) click here. 

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Day 1 – participants (6)

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Day 2 Panel 1 (3)

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