
From May 30 to June 1, 2022, the eighth meeting of TeRRIFICA project partners (Horizon 2020) organized by the Faculty of Human Geography and Planning (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) took place in Poznań. Over 20 people exchanged experiences on cooperation for adaptation to climate change in 6 European regions located in Spain (Barcelona Metropolitan Area), Belarus (Minsk), France (Brittany, Normandy, Pays de Loire), Poland (Poznań Agglomeration), Germany (Vechta and Cloppenburg region) and the Balkans (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina).
As part of the “Market Place” session, the representatives of the pilot regions creatively presented the following stages of cooperation with representatives of the broadly understood civil society, business, government, and science. The co-creation between them aims at co-developing climate action plans for selected hot spots, i.e., places indicated by users of the tool #MapujKlimat (mapujklimat.terrifica.eu) as requiring interventions to strengthen adaptation to climate change. These plans are one of the project’s main deliverables contributing to the “socialization” of the climate change mitigation and adaptation process. It is worth emphasizing that the #MapujKlimat tool plays an important role not only in the preparation of informal action plans in the regions but, as in the case of the Poznań Agglomeration, it supported the work on the Climate Adaptation Plan for the Poznań Metropolis. The data collected with this tool (citizen science) supported the diagnostic part to assess the vulnerability and sensitivity of the Agglomeration to the impact of climate change.
In addition to the reporting on work progress in individual work packages, an essential element of the meeting was sessions devoted to the future of the crowd mapping tool and the planning of further activities in the pilot regions, including the conduct of national symposiums summarizing the project’s achievements. During the meeting, vital organizational decisions were made related to the preparations for the TeRRIFICA International Summer School in Barcelona in September 2022 and the international conference crowning the work in the project, which will be held in November this year in Brussels.
Undoubtedly, one of the most exciting moments of the meeting was the lecture by the respected UNEP expert Jan-Gustav Strandeasen entitled “The Agenda That Changed The World.” In his speech on May 30, Jan-Gustav presented the process of shaping sustainable development policy at the global level, particularly the challenges related to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The lecture was one of the two satellite events organized by the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań as part of the European Green Week – EUGreenWeek. The second event was a green walk along the streets of Poznań on June 1 (TeRRIFICA Green Walk) from Śródka along the Warta River towards the Old Market Square. The guides were the employees of the Department of Integrated Geography of the Faculty of Human Geography and Planning – Andrzej Mizgajski, Katarzyna Fagiewicz, and Małgorzata Stępniewska. In a light formula, they familiarized the participants with contemporary urban development problems, including the challenges of adapting to climate change and the importance of green and blue infrastructure in shaping residents’ quality of life. The bus excursion preceded the walk. The project partners could see with their own eyes the characteristic elements of the wedge-ring green system in Poznań and take a closer look at the spatial structure of this city.