7th CARDIMED Consortium Meeting - 14-16 October, Marseille, France

Last week, the French partners of the CARDIMED project welcomed the entire consortium in Marseille for the project’s fourth annual meeting. Region Sud, SEMIDE, Aix-Marseille University and EMPAN hosted all the partners for 3 days of work. These reunions, packed with discussions, presentations, site visits and workshops, provided an opportunity to take a giant leap forward in the project’s progress.

SEMIDE was able to present the progress made at the French demonstration site comprising the Saint-Jérôme and Saint-Charles campuses, as well as all the activities that took place there and to which it contributed, such as the open-air exhibition of the project’s comic strip produced by AMU, a training course on NBS for technical staff from French local authorities, and a regional steering committee meeting. A site visit was also organized to demonstrate what a demonstration site looks like after two years of implementation and to share the lessons learnt from the experience.

The general assembly also brought together the project’s replication partners: the city of Murcia in Spain, the Community of Catalonia, and the province of Carinthia in Austria. However, this year we also welcomed a representative from the city of Nablus in Palestine and a representative from the Ministry of Equipment in Tunisia, both invited by the SEMIDE, which is responsible for replication in the southern Mediterranean countries. All these project replicators were able to take part in workshops and discussion sessions where the demonstration sites provided them with advice and feedback on their experiences to help them develop NBS in their own territories.

Finally, SEMIDE highlighted its upcoming networking initiatives. Firstly, it will be attending the NbS International Congress 2026 in Paris to lead a session during the scientific conference on behalf of CARDIMED on the topic ‘Reconnecting cities and peri-urban areas with nature: the role of Nature-based Solutions’. Then we will also be present at the Network Nature Week during the Cities Festival day to host a world-café session on “Ambition to Action! - Enabling Nature Restoration in Cities”.

SEMIDE is also leading and organizing a Financing Nature-Based Solutions Webinar Series from November 19^th to December 3^rd as part of the CARDIMED capacity building program with the support of MIP4ADAPT and NetworkNature. Different members of our organization will take actions as speakers to share their expertise.