In most of our articles, we focus on projects that are European in scale, or at the very least, concentrate on multiple European countries. But as we often emphasise, the whole point of such projects is to foster the proliferation of innovative, green solutions on a national or local level: to ensure that local or national government actors learn about them and will be able to mainstream them as policies. This is why our work in local, regional or national contexts becomes important, as this is where such policies are implemented.
In the Interreg HU-SK project ‘Community- and nature-based improvement of Biosphere Reserves along the Hungarian-Slovak border to jointly protect and enhance biodiversity’, we work with biosphere reserve managers along the Slovakian-Hungarian border area, in order to facilitate the sustainable development of biosphere reserves in the area. The project shall take 30 months and has an overall budget of €1 million, and aims at enhancing their role and importance in biodiversity conservation by involving local communities and exploiting the potential of nature-based solutions. The project directly involves members of management organisations of 3 out of 5 biosphere reserves (BRs) in the HU-SK border region: Pilis BR, Fertő-lake BR and Poľana BR. Additional BRs (Aggtelek BR, Slovak Karst BR) are represented by associated partners.
The project will involve 12 pilot projects around the 3 BRs. Topics of pilots are restoration of natural habitats, protection of endangered species, suppression of invasive species, and environmental education and awareness-raising. Communities play a vital role in the pilots and in the project at large. This is to ensure that solutions are sustainable, insofar as they have the support of the majority of local residents. This is important because local communities can play a crucial role in maintaining biosphere reserves and vice versa, can reverse interventions that they dislike.
Our role in this as a knowledge organisation is on evaluation and planning. For example, we carry out situation analyses or examine how nature-based solutions can be used in BRs. The point of these activities is to prepare other partners to better manage their BRs. This takes concrete form in the pilot action plans, but also in joint strategies, joint future project proposals. In our team, Edit Konok is leading these activities.
We wanted to highlight this example as a complimentary to our transnational work: we wanted to showcase how the good practices we exchange in our projects (e.g., on nature-based solutions) can trickle down to our local work.