The LIFE-IP ZENAPA partner meeting and Central Steering Committee (CSC) meeting took place on 09 and 10 June 2021.
Due to the ongoing Corona pandemic and the resulting restrictions, the events were again held digitally. The aim of the ZENAPA partner meeting – which is held twice a year – is to summarise the progress of the project in the regions and to enable an exchange between all project participants. On 9 June, the CSC members’ meeting took place in the morning. Prof. Dr. Heck summarised the project’s progress since the last members’ meeting last year and addressed the ongoing pandemic impact on the project.
This was followed by a workshop with interesting technical presentations on various nature and biodiversity topics. Ms Karoline Brandt of the NABU Foundation spoke about the Fairpachten project, which aims to enable more biodiversity on leased agricultural land. Afterwards, Mr Matthias Knüver from the Global Nature Fund reported on the EU LIFE project “Insect-friendly regions”, which aims to develop solutions for a new culture of insect protection in dialogue with agriculture. Furthermore, the deputy head of the Biomass and Cultural Landscape Development Department of the IfaS, Mr Jörg Böhmer, spoke on the topic of energy hedges and their possible uses.
On the afternoon of 9 and the morning of 10 June, the climate change managers reported on the current status of the project implementation and on the upcoming projects in the project regions. Since the last partner meeting last year, the climate change managers have been able to achieve further encouraging project progress. In many regions, positive experiences have already been made with the digital implementation of events (e.g. online seminars, information events). The consortium agreed and expressed confidence that face-to-face events would soon be feasible again. Although the experiences with the digital events could be described as quite positive, all partners would look forward to the personal contact and the associated interaction with the event participants.
The partner meeting ended with an exchange between the NEEMO monitoring team and the ZENAPA project management team of IfaS.