Innovations

GoNaturePositive! is a collaborative initiative backed by the European Commission dedicated to accelerating awareness and transformative action towards a nature-positive economy among policymakers, investors, businesses and wider society. The project is coordinated by Trinity College Dublin and involves 20 partners across 14 countries, represented by research institutions, non-profits and environmental organisations who are leading the nature-positive agenda at global and European levels.

EFB participates in the Horizon Europe project as a partner, joined by two of its Affiliated Partners (Portuguese Association – Associação Nacional de Coberturas Verdes (ANCV) GREENROOFS®, and Czech Association – Svaz zakládání a údržby zeleně, z.s. (SZÚZ) – Asociace zelených střech a fasád (AZSF)) ensuring a strong network-based contribution. Together, we are responsible for the Green Building Pilot.

What we do:

    1. Definition & Framework: Deliver a clear definition and conceptual framework for the nature-positive economy.

We have developed a Concept Note and 5 Key Messages to outline what a nature-positive economy could look like. These resources are intended for businesses, NGOs, nature-based enterprises, policymakers, researchers, standards bodies, financial institutions, local communities, and citizens as a framework for action. The Concept Note is available in English, while the Executive Summary and 5 Key Messages are provided in various formats and languages.

    2. Identify Pathways: Create a roadmap that identifies policy and governance pathways towards a nature-positive economy.

• Report: Mapping policy and co-operate initiative landscapes for systemic change towards a nature-positive economy
• Series of sectoral policy briefs, each highlighting how key economic sectors can contribute to a Nature-Positive Economy
• Sectoral brief for Built Environment

    3. Demonstrate Benefits: Demonstrate how nature-positive practices can generate multiple benefits for people and the planet.

    4. Multiply Effect: Harnesses the commitment of an Impact Board of multiplier networks towards achieving a long-term shared vision of the nature-positive economy.

As cities worldwide grapple with urgent climate challenges, it becomes imperative to not only devise robust technical and processual solutions but also to accelerate their implementation. Despite the availability of such solutions, our urban areas continue to be vulnerable to the intensifying impacts of climate change, including increasing temperatures and heavy rainfall events.

This project is about the pursuit of climate-resilient urban environments, by focusing on sustainable, integrative, and cross-sectoral planning and implementation at scale, including innovative impact-based financing instruments. Thus the project is focusing on two demo areas.

The first area is the neighbourhood development project “climate-boulevard” Melk (Austria), including housing and traffic routes. While the structural transformation of a parking-place into a so-called inner-city climate forest will be implemented as a demo and the corresponding impact will be monitored during the project period, a holistic cross-siloed impact planning process, impact-based financing and co-creation structures will be implemented for the whole neighbourhood area by setting up a living lab for the entire neighbourhood development.

The second neighbourhood transformation is in Berlin Charlottenburg (Germany) – with the demo of a completely rainwater self-sufficient street, the Ilsenburgerstraße.

Through co-creative Living Labs in each demo area, conflicting objectives will be identified and negotiated between all relevant stakeholders, including developers, property owners, citizens, enterprises and public hand. The aim is generating scalable and transferable solutions at the whole district. To ensure long-lasting and active engagement, the living lab will be further developed to a newly to be found privately managed local company in order to activate citizen engagement at the district level by fostering open innovation via a number of cross-sectoral (planning and management-) tools, disseminating knowledge on climate change adaptation.

METABUILDING is an innovation ecosystem.
The members of METABUILDING bring opportunities and innovation to the built environment sector. METABUILDING’s focus is connecting stakeholders (small-medium enterprise’s to public bodies and large companies) from different sectors in order to create an integrated value chain.

The METABUILDING platform is the digital backbone.
The METABUILDING platform consists of several digital tools and services that help SME’s and other stakeholders engage in successful innovation. In this platform you will find services and information that will assist you in finding existing innovative technologies ready to deployed or project partners seeking collaboration on new exciting projects.

ProGIreg uses nature for urban regeneration with and for citizens! The project was funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme and ran from June 2018 until 2023. ProGIreg stands for ‘productive Green Infrastructure for post-industrial urban regeneration’: nature for renewal. As front-runner cities, Dortmund (Germany), Turin (Italy), Zagreb (Croatia) and Ningbo (China) hosted Living Labs in post-industrial districts where nature-based solutions were developed, tested and implemented. Global cities working together: Cascais (Portugal), Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Piraeus (Greece) and Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) closely followed the progress in the Living Labs and engaged in city-to-city exchange to replicate the nature-based solutions. EFB is very proud to to have participated as a project partner.