Marina Škunca | 31.03.2025
At the end of February, the Erasmus+ project “TUNE IT – Nature benefits: from theory to practice” officially came to an end. It’s always a bittersweet moment. For two years, we’ve been working together, learning together, transformed theory into practice and explored examples across Europe.
If this is your first contact with the project, let me take you back a little and give you a brief introduction.
Nature is more than just protected species and habitats; it provides numerous services to the society. Nature Benefits, often called ecosystem services, encompass all direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being. While some of them we actively use daily (e.g. food and drinking water), others often go unnoticed – such as carbon capture, water storage, flood protection, air purification, climate regulation, pollination, soil and nutrient formation.
The main objective of the project was to develop a course and provide training for site managers and local (regional) authorities responsible for managing natural areas. The training will enable them to use existing knowledge and tools on the nature benefits and apply them in their daily work. This in turn will ensure that vital nature services are maintained and increased for societal needs.
And we succeeded – we created a 3-module course, tailored to a wide range of audiences and developed in five languages (English, Croatian, Dutch, Turkish and Ukrainian). In MODULE 1 ‘Learning the basics’ the partners provided a general overview of ecosystem services (nature benefits (methodologies, available guidelines and examples of good practice. MODULE 2 ‘Putting it into practice’ enabled participants to explore in more detail how to use nature benefits (1) when communicating with different stakeholders; (2) when choosing alternative solutions or planning restoration; (3) for generating alternative income; and (4) when planning the management of their site. Finally, MODULE 3 ‘Planning for future action’ provided participants with the necessary skills to transfer the knowledge gained to their daily work and colleagues within their own organisations.
Of course, it wasn’t all us! It was an amazing collaboration of Eurosite with nine organisations from five European countries.
- Natuurpunt Beheer (our lead partner)
- Natuurpunt Natuuracademie,
- Wageningen Research,
- Stichting IVN,
- Natuurmonumenten,
- Danube-Carpathian Programme,
- Geonatura Ltd. Consultancy in Nature Protection,
- Doğa Koruma Merkezi Vakfı (DKM), and
- Ecosystem Services Partnership.
As we say ”till next time” to our project partners and roll up our sleeves to plan Season 2, we would like to invite you to:
- learn more about the project’s results and impacts in the Practitioners’ Brief;
- get inspired by reading the project’s Handbook for education courses on ecosystem services and nature benefits;
- enjoy the project video;
- take a moment to sit in the warm spring sun… enjoy the brand-new colour palette of spring… now close your eyes and breathe deeply… listen to the birds cheerfully chirping… and enjoy the sweet and delicate scent of spring blossoms…. Done? Then you have just experienced some services that nature offers us for free: health and inspiration!
Stay tuned and visit the Eurosite Resource Centre for more information!
