On the 21st of April 2021 a non-public workshop was given for the members of the neighborhood management program in Berlin. During this half-day event, the participants increased their knowledge about climate change adaptation and mitigation measures through edible cities solutions. The aim of this workshop was to engage the participants in edible cities solutions and to decrease barriers for their implementation.

In the first part of the workshop, the innovation project EdiCitNet was introduced. After that, a presentation about the benefits of edible cities solutions for climate change adaptation was given. Three different presentations by the president of the allotment gardeners in Berlin, PRINZ and Bundesverband GebäudeGrün e.V. (BuGG) looked more closely at the practical implementation of edible cities solutions in Berlin.

In the end, different ideas for edible cities solutions and the next workshops were brainstormed in small groups.

We are glad to inform you that the Performance assessment tool, available in the EdiCitNet toolbox web interface (https://toolbox.edicitnet.com/assessment/) has been improved.

One of the main novelties is that users can check out the TOP 10 Edible City Solutions (ECS) in terms of their performance regarding sustainability, urban challenges, and ecosystem services. Moreover, the TOP 10 ECS can also be organized by typology of ECS (e.g. private gardens, community gardens, community kitchens, local markets).

Another novelty is that users can explore the performance of a specific ECS or compare it with other ECS in terms of Sustainability, urban challenges, and ecosystem services. In addition, if you are interested to know more about this ECS, you can easily access their PROFILES from the performance assessment interface. Also, all the data concerning the performance assessment is public available in j.son and excel formats.

EdiCitNet is planning to improve even more the assessment tool. To do so, the tool will allow user to filter ECS per city, and thus explore, compare, and check the top 10 ECS per city.

The performance assessment tool is public and does not require registration to be used. Nevertheless, we kindly invite representatives of Edible City Solutions to create their profiles in the toolbox, and thus help us to expand the edible network, promote knowledge transfer and built together the most compressive database of Edible City Solutions. Please, let us know if you need help.

This year’s IRITHESys Summer School is being organised by the EdiCitNet project, and will take place in a two-week online format from September 20th – October 1st 2021.

Participants in the EdiCitNet Summer School will get the opportunity to develop their own “Edible City Solution”, designed to effectively tackle local urban environmental and social challenges. Throughout the two weeks, transdisciplinary groups will explore the complexity of Edible City Solutions and the challenges and opportunities that exist when it comes to applying them in a real world context.

The event will bring together, and draw from insights, from both the academic and non-academic community – with experts supplying their knowledge on different topics from the broad field of edible city solutions, and practitioners providing their insights from the field. The EdiCitNet Summer School will also be adapting and combining successful aspects of common summer school formats, and complementing traditional elements such as lectures and presentations with group work, online team-building activities, interactive on-site sessions and transdisciplinary cooperation.

Highlights of the EdiCitNet Summer School include:⁠

• Inspiring talks on sustainable urban design, innovative water and resource management and how best to apply Edible City Solutions in urban areas to tackle social challenges
• Virtual on-site tours demonstrating best practices and insights into real-life Edible City Solutions
• Engaging “hands-on” interactive tasks with stakeholders and the international ECS network
• Project work and practical tasks within interdisciplinary working groups
• Regular input and feedback from ECS experts from diverse backgrounds
• A flexible, digital learning environment that can be adapted to your own individual schedule and fitted around other work or study commitments
• An official certificate upon completion of the programme⁠

⁠Find more details and sign up under this this link: “Online Summer School 2021: “Edible City Solutions: One step further toward resilient and sustainably productive cities” We look forward to receiving your application!

A new handbook published by the European Commission provides decision-makers and practitioners with a comprehensive NBS impact assessment framework and a robust set of indicators and methodologies to help them assess the impact of nature-based solutions across 12 different societal challenge areas.

The handbook, entitled “Evaluating the impact of nature-based solutions”, which was published on Wednesday May 5, includes contributions from EdiCitNet, alongside 16 other EU-funded NBS projects and collaborating institutions.

A number of EdiCitNet partners, including city administrations from the Front-Runner Cities and an interdisciplinary group of research partners from a a broad variety of scientific disciplines, contributed their experiences on NBS impact assessment and monitoring to the handbook. Drawing from information gathered throughout the project, including in particular the experiences in the EdiCitNet Living Labs, the partners offer insights on, among other things: how to match intended aims with suitable indicators, how to assist stakeholders in selecting or developing methods for data collection that are both scientifically sound and feasible in light of local personnel, knowledge, time and financial resources, and the importance of giving Edible City Solution coordinators and participants access to convenient tools for data collection, storage and management.

This new handbook has been developed as part of the European Taskforce for NBS Impact Assessment (NBS TF2) with the aim of: serving as a reference for relevant EU policies and activities, orienting urban practitioners in developing robust impact evaluation frameworks for nature-based solutions at different scales and building the European evidence base regarding NBS impacts.

Download the new handbook “Evaluating the impact of nature-based solutions” here.

Apples and pears, coffee, almonds, avocado, pumpkin and zucchini: what looks like your last shopping list may actually disappear from your dining table if pollinator insects such as bees went extinct. And this scenario is getting more realistic with each passing day due to increasing urbanisation, high pollution levels and destruction of green spaces.

One key step to save pollinators is to make everyone understand the tight bond between our lives and their survival. Want to help but unsure how? In this case, the answer is a hashtag: #Flowers4Bees!

#Flowers4Bees is a social media campaign celebrating World Bee Day (May 20) and raising awareness of the importance of bees and pollinators in general. Joining us is easy: from May 3 to June 4, take a picture of a flower and/or a bee and post it on the dedicated Facebook group of the campaign, or on your Twitter profile – in this case, do not forget to use #Flowers4Bees or we will not be able to find your picture!

#Flowers4Bees is an initiative of the following projects that are working together to make our cities more sustainable, green and liveable:

• URBAN GreenUP
• proGIreg
• Oppla
• UNaLab
• INTERLACE
• NetworkNature
• EdiCitNet
• GrowGreen
• CLEARING HOUSE
• My Wild City

How do these projects achieve that goal? All of them are designing and installing innovative nature-based solutions in many European cities. These are interventions inspired by nature and they tackle urban problems such as poor air quality, limited biodiversity, flooding and high temperatures.

Bees and other pollinator insects are happy to see nature-based solutions pop-up in cities all over Europe. One intervention they are certain to enjoy are pollinator houses, that help them move across the city and reach as many green areas as possible by providing native bees, moths, butterflies and other regional pollinators with nesting sites. Pollinators benefit from the planting and cultivation of a range of edible plants too – in particular herbs like borage, basil and lavender, fruit trees and vegetables like squash and green beans.

Follow the hashtag #Flowers4Bees to discover some of the pollinator-friendly solutions installed by these different projects and the different ways that cities around the world are supporting bees to pursue their crucial mission of pollinating countless different species of fruits and vegetables.

URBAN GreenUP, proGIreg, UNaLab, INTERLACE, NetworkNature, EdiCitNet, GrowGreen and CLEARING HOUSE have all received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. Oppla is supported by the European Commission under the Environment (including climate change) Theme of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technical Development.

According to the Food Waste Index Report 2021, the world wasted approximately 931 million tonnes of food in 2019 – with 61 per cent of this waste coming from households, 26 per cent from restaurants and 13 per cent from supermarkets. How can innovation help reduce resource waste? And how far is Berlin on the way to becoming a truly “zero waste” city?

On April 27th, Dr Ina Säumel, lead of the EdiCitNet project, and head of the junior research group Multifunctional Landscapes at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems at Humboldt University Berlin, discussed this topic with others at an event entitled “On the Way to a Zero-Waste Capital City”.

Other participants in the discussion included Stephanie Otto, the CEO of BSR, Berlin’s waste management service, Alexander Piutti, the founder and CEO of SPRK.global, a start-up which aims to reduce food waste through technology and Jasmin Suchy, who has opened Germany’s first vegan zero-waste restaurant, “Frea” in the centre of Berlin.

The participants discussed different ways of approaching the challenge of achieving zero waste in the German capital. Dr Ina Säumel offered the scientific perspective and explained how urban farming and innovations within Berlin-based food systems – like those explored within the EdiCitNet project – can make a significant contribution to waste reduction and more sustainable cities.

This online discussion (in German) was part of a series of “Digital Talks” organised in cooperation with the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper and the business network Berlin Partner. Missed the livestream? You can watch a recording of the event right here.