Over four years of joint work has almost come to an end. During the final OpenNESS Annual Meeting in Smolenice, Slovakia, the participants presented research outcomes and discussed the impact of OpenNESS’ efforts to operationalise natural capital and ecosystem services. When discussing the way forward and what next it came especially forward that research priorities in the future should be to integrate the societal challenges further, enabling us to handle better the tensions between society and natural processes and pave the way for synergies. Read more »

The OpenNESS workshop 'Ecosystem services and EU regulatory frameworks: Experiences from real-world decision making' was hosted in Brussels on 2 February 2017. It aimed to encourage a two-directional exchange between science and policy or decision making and for this to be a transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. At the workshop Oppla was presented as the perfect place to look for products and examples to facilitate real-world decision making. Read more »

Photo: Rob Wolters presents 'How can Oppla help?'

Policymakers often have to make decisions under great complexity, uncertainty and time pressure. The QUICKScan tool has been developed for the first stage of policymaking: identifying and exploring alternatives to solve problems. The software tool increases the speed of this process and combines the input of many stakeholders in participatory workshops. It has been applied 70 times in 20 different countries, for a wide range of environmental policy issues. Read more »

There’s a great need in European projects on ecosystem services and nature-based solutions for sharing good practice, working examples and quantifiable evidence. With the concept of nature-based solutions gaining increasing attention from policy, practice and research there’s a growing demand for interdisciplinary approaches and stakeholder engagement. This will support co-creation of solutions to offer multiple benefits to society. Rather than developing networking and knowledge-sharing platforms for each topic separately it is important to join forces and use existing platforms. Oppla is a key platform in this respect. Read more »