ClimaGen will demonstrate how Climate-resilient regeneration and renaturing for, by and with vulnerable neighbourhoods, can help cities and regions in their transitions towards net-zero. 5 Demonstration cities (Belgrade, Gdańsk, Tartu, Torino, and Trondheim), will implement 25% increased share of newly created and/or restored public green spaces in each city. 4 Replication Cities (Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Gernika and Thessaloniki) will experiment with shorter-term co-creative measures with the same objectives and methods to plan for future implementation of the measures. All 9 cities will run their own Work Packages in ClimaGen, supported by 5 cross-cutting concepts and 4 transversal WPs: ClimaGreens will nurture integrated renaturing measures that create resilience at several scales, and avoid maladaptation in the journey to climate-neutrality. ClimaLabs will provide local and regional collaborative governance, with arts, culture and youth, entrepreneurship and financing, and organisational resilience in long-term planning strategies. ClimaImpact will generate evidence-based decision support and valuation of co-benefits, in easy-to-understand and, where possible, visualised formats. ClimaValue will offer outreach, capacity building and policy guidance, with strategic advocacy together with sister projects and close collaboration with Missions/NEB communities, while an evidence-based ClimaGen Guidance Package will disseminate results and knowledge to cities. City Dialogues and cross-cutting Sense-Making Sessions will support local implementation and common learning. Together these define impact pathways to knowledge sharing, scaling and replication. The ClimaGen Games will tie these activities together with a portfolio of participatory, gamified, citizen-science-based methods to engage all partners and stakeholders in an inclusive manner, and to use their diversity as a strength.

SMILE CITY provides realistic circular systemic solutions to support the evolution towards a carbon-neutral, environmentally sustainable, toxic-free, circular economy by 2050. The contribution to C02 reduction works on two levels: - an intensive use of recycled materials in replacement of virgin ones, without decreasing the performance of final products; - the use of such products and applications to increase sustainable mobility. The project aims to integrate innovative systemic solutions in up to 100 km of cycling paths and implement 20 e-bike charging stations, developed using different types of recycled urban waste: construction materials, EoL tyres and EoL batteries from Electric Vehicles. The foreseen innovations include the creation of e-bike charging stations made of recycled concrete precast elements and PV panels equally produced with recycled materials, the installation of recycled rubber moulded products for urban furniture such as rubber bollard, lane dividers, and rubberized asphalt, which contributes both to increase sustainability and safety. SMILE CITY will thus assemble the technological state of the art of the different value chains involved to implement circular systemic solutions in 7 different EU and non-EU countries, backing the transition towards a regenerative, inclusive and circular economy at local and regional scale across Europe and therefore boosting interregional and cross-border cooperation. In addition, the project will also increase resource efficiency, reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy and reduce the negative environmental footprint related to current recycling techniques of the considered urban waste value chains. By supporting awareness raising and information spreading, SMILE CITY will engage both citizens and industrial leaders in the green transition towards climate-neutral solutions for Circular Cities, bolstering the market uptake of circular solutions through regional and local actions. Two partners are CCRI members.

The overall objective of NBS EduWORLD is to nurture an NBS literate society, supporting a just transition to a sustainable future. For this, NBS EduWORLD will create an NBS community that facilitates synergies between NBS professionals and education providers and ensures free and easy access to NBS knowledge and resources for all. To achieve this goal, NBS EduWORLD will summarise the state of play of NBS education in Europe and evaluate the initiatives already in place, determine how to expand and replicate them and establish a basis and framework for the project itself and future initiatives, resulting in guidance and (policy) recommendations. In parallel, the project will analyse NBS demonstrators, with an educational dimension (Tier-1), across Europe (NBS EduSystems), to support the testing and improvement of approaches and resources with NBS demonstrators with no or a limited educational dimension (Tier-2) and create the means and opportunities for all NBS practitioners to engage with educators, inter alia via Tier-3 NBS EduSystems. This will be done whilst supporting the overarching goal of promoting NBS as a viable career prospect for European citizens of all ages. To adequately engage educators who are at different points on their NBS journey, the project will provide specific activities for those who are not yet familiar with the concept and benefits of NBS, and those already aware but in need of support to progress to the next stage. These activities will be scaled up/out by extensive dissemination and communication activities to maximise the project’s outreach and ensure its long-term success. Only by joining with NBS experts + Education Experts + Civil Society + supportive policies can we create an NBS EduWORLD - a community that makes a difference.

Hamburg (DE), London (UK) and Milan (IT) have decided to create CLEVER Cities. Led by Hamburg, a well-balanced, competent partnership will position the EU as global leader in nature-based solution (NBS) innovation. CLEVER Cities applies a city centric approach, starting by key urban regeneration challenges and employing strong local partner clusters, to foster sustainable and socially inclusive urban regeneration locally, in Europe and globally. We will co-create, - implement, and -manage locally tailored NBS to deliver tangible social, environmental and economic improvements for urban regeneration. We are committed to make the interventions in front-runner cities (FR) cases for successful NBS and prepare robust replication roadmaps in fellow cities (FE), that also have NBS experience and expertise to offer. We will ensure long-term sustainability of actions in FR and FE by initiating urban innovation partnerships that will use SMART city principles to engage residents, establish new governance procedures, generate innovative financing and investment strategies. CLEVER Cities will employ partners’ large global networks to generate rapid and durable uptake of NBS by capacitating businesses and a CLEVER Solutions Basket with innovative technological, business, financing and governance solutions, in Europe and globally. The influential and committed FR will serve as role model for FE and global cities in East Asia and South America. All cities will actively engage in replication, thus, help to meet EU and UN sustainability goals and profile the EU as global leader in green innovation. CLEVER Cities materialises in strong local clusters around FR with partners, which can both support local co-creation as well as transversal activities with specific knowledge and expertise. This makes it a distinct, exciting project that will generate lasting results in cities and deliver a CLEVER Cities package with solutions, guidance and open-sourced data EU NBS reference framework.

It is now widely acknowledged that to make adequate and timely progress in the direction of biodiversity mainstreaming, three critical aspects – previously overlooked or insufficiently handled by supranational policies – need to be emphasised and further explored in their transformative potential: 1) The establishment and operation of bottom-up and especially City- and Community- driven initiatives, which may adequately complement the Country level National Sustainable Development Plans and Green Growth Strategies; 2) The introduction and refinement of appropriate methodologies, and capacity-building activities, to enable the engagement of all key societal stakeholders (notably including market players, citizens and local government actors) in concerted actions to restore the most compromised elements of the natural environments; 3) Continuous work on enabling nature-based solutions by identifying the connections, and addressing the disconnects, between biodiversity conservation and social, economic, and technological challenges. To meet the requirements of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and of the recent Commission proposal for a Nature Restoration Regulation, the UNP+ consortium proposes a 3-year long action research plan, engaging 11 academic partners and 5 European Cities as “Lighthouse” and “Greening” testbeds, ready to share knowledge and scale up from their ongoing experiences in UNP design and NBS implementation & scaling, to a next-generation strategy for urban and periurban ecosystem transformation, mainstreaming biodiversity, ecosystem services, and natural capital in urban policies and economies through adopting a whole of society approach.