Genk - NbS bridging green and industrial heritage
Genk’s multi-annual strategic plan for 2014-19 is a response to the closure of the Ford car manufacturing company. The main objective of the plan has been to use Genk’s natural and human capital for sustainable value creation. Nature-based solutions are an integral part of the plan, used to create blue-green connections (top-down approach) and promote social inclusion (bottom-up approach).
A first mapping exercise by ARTS (an FP7 project funded by the European Commission), revealed about 90 initiatives in Genk working around the topic of transition towards sustainability. Many of these transition initiatives provide multiple benefits. Only a minority of these should be described...
Small-scale nature-based solutions projects can grow significantly when managed well. The FP7 project ARTS identified in the Genk Roadmap several mechanisms that could increase the impact of nature-based solutions:
- Replicating: take-up of new ways of Doing-Thinking-Organising (DTO) of one transition initiative by another or by different actors spread these new ways.
- Coupling, or partnering: pooling and/or complementing resources, competences, and capacities exploit synergies to support and ensure the continuity of new ways of DTO.
- Upscaling: increasing the number of members, supporters or users of a single transition initiative spreads these new ways of DTO.
- Instrumentalising: tapping into and capitalising on opportunities afforded by the multi-level governance context of the city-region strengthens new ways of DTO locally.
- Embedding: aligning old and new ways of DTO integrates them into city-regional governance patterns.
Due to the closure of the coal mines in the second part of the 20th century and the disappearance of the car manufacturing industry, Genk has received large subsidies from the Flemish Government through the LRM (Limburgse Reconversie Maatschappij) to initiate a transition in the city’s economy....
Erica Meynaerts, EnergyVille, VITO (ARTS-project)
Peter Vos, Afdeling leefmilieu en duurzame ontwikkeling, Stad Genk
