OPERAs project in Brussels for EU Greenweek
Green Week took place on the 3rd-5th June. Organised by the European Commission, Green Week is the biggest annual conference on European environment policy. This year's theme was nature and biodiversity. As an EU funded project focused on ecosystem services OPERAs was invited to attend and talk to delegates about its aims to bridge the gap between science, policy and practice.
Ecosystem services, policy, politicians and online platforms
Targeted at entrepreneurs, consultants, policymakers, land managers and scientists, OPPLA aims to provide practical advice, guidance, tools and techniques. Featuring a question and answer service (‘Ask OPPLA’), users can ask questions and receive responses to questions about natural capital and ecosystem services from experts across Europe.
Prof. Mark Rounsevell and Rachel Chisholm spent time talking to a range of delegates about the work OPERAs does, in particular its co-development of a new online platform OPPLA which aims to provide expert knowledge, case studies and guidance in natural capital and ecosystem services to a range of users Europe wide.
The conference saw good representation from the Scottish ecosystem services community and OPERAS stand had a number of high profile visitors including Dr Aileen McLeod, Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform and Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in the Scottish Government
OPPLA a new online platform for ecosystem services knowledge
OPPLA a European wide knowledge-sharing platform jointly developed by OPERAs and OPENness project the concept gathered a lot of interest from policy makers, practitioners and EU officials.
Featured heavily as part of the stand with live demonstrations and OPPLA agents' working throughout the Green Week venue, proactively raising awareness the OPPLA platform attracted the involvement of many of the participants.
The platform aims to bring together knowledge about natural capital and ecosystem services, its overall purpose being to assist people in making nature work for the benefit of humankind.
