On 19 September 2019 the event, “Co-creating the Future of Biodiversity and Natural Capital”, was held in Brussels, Belgium as a collaboration between the Horizon 2020 project, MAIA, KIP-INCA and the European Commission. The large meeting space was fortunate as the meeting was well attended by many researchers and NGO staff. The conference’s goal was to take stock of and share the different experiences, challenges, and work being done on the development of natural capital accounting across different EU Member States, as well as define priorities for future collaboration in the MAIA project.

The conference had four simultaneous tracks to address the different aspects of the project, including challenges, support, data, and biodiversity. The meeting began with a welcome from Maurice Hoffmann and the objectives of the meeting by Sander Jacobs. The first plenary presentation by Veronika Vysna, Lars Hein, and Josefina Enfedaque elaborated on INCA, MAIA, and the Biodiversity partnership initiative. Following this, Sylvie Campagne and Sander Jacobs presented the challenges and questions about natural capital accounting (NCA) in MS countries, and prepared the audience to discuss the topics in the working sessions.

After plenary feedback on Session 1, the attendees engaged in the second and third working sessions. One particularly innovative session included the data collection exercise, where groups came up with potential collaborations and arranged them in order of importance. Finally, the conference ended with one last plenary session, final remarks, a wonderful closing reception and a dinner that allowed attendees from all over Europe to further discuss the topics and allowed us to make links with the InnoForESt project.

 

By:

Daniel Monteleone

Project Officer

European Landowners’ Organization