Project members met to define common goals and approaches
From the 18th to 20th of June, 23 participants from Romania, Poland, UK, Sweden, the US and Germany met at EIFER in Karlsruhe for the kick-off workshop of the project “Creating Interfaces – Building capacity for integrated governance at the Food-Water-Energy-nexus (FWE) in cities on the water”. In addition to intense work on the further definition of our common goals and approaches, the participants had the opportunity to visit the “Energieberg” Karlsruhe as well as the Rhine River and to enjoy the view of Karlsruhe and the surrounding area as far as France from the Karlsruher Turmberg.
This three year-project started in May 2018. It unites 11 partners from research, civil society organizations and industry coming from six different countries in Europe and North America. It is funded by the program Sustainable Global Urban Initiative (SUGI) Food-Water-Energy Nexus. The Belmont Forum and Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe set up this program based on funds of the EU and national funding agencies. The kick-off meeting for the different SUGI projects took place in London one week before the Creating Interfaces kick-off in Karlsruhe.
The project “Creating Interfaces“ addresses capacity building for the urban FWE nexus, making the FWE linkages understandable to the stakeholders (government, science, business, and citizens), and facilitating cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. It will develop and test innovative approaches for local knowledge co-creation and participation through Urban Living Labs in three mid-size cities on water: Tulcea, Romania, Wilmington, USA and Slupsk, Poland. Complemented by previous research and a citizen science toolbox, these Labs comprise a user-defined co-creative approach where research questions, problems, and solutions are decided and implemented with stakeholders themselves.
More information can be found at: https://creatinginterfaces.eifer.kit.edu/ and on https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/creating-interfaces/