Second meeting of the Bulgarian Community of Practice

Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" hosted the second national meeting of the Bulgarian Community of Practice (CoP) under the SELINA project. The event was part of the "Day of Applied Geography and Geospatial Technologies" organized by the Bulgarian Geographical Society and the University Center for Geospatial Research and Technologies at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". The meeting was attended by representatives of state institutions, universities, NGOs and business experts.

"Most of you and I were together a year and a half ago when we established our SELINA Community of Practice. Our ambition is to see this Community develop and continue beyond the end of the project. The most important thing for us today is to exchange ideas on how to integrate the concept of ecosystem services in different areas of activity", said SELINA coordinator for Bulgaria Prof. Dr. Stoyan Nedkov from the Applied Geoinformatics Section at the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in his opening speech.

At the beginning of the event, Asst. Prof. Dr. Hristina Prodanova presented the progress made in the development of the CoP since January 2024. Alexander Petrov, co-founder of the EdnoDarvo (One Tree) platform—one of the Bulgarian initiatives identified in the project as part of the "Seeds of Transformative Change", initiatives that actively challenge existing paradigms by redefining the way people perceive their relationship with nature, by restructuring market dynamics or transforming decision-making processes in both the public and private sectors. Alexander joined the meeting online and presented the main objective of EdnoDarvo—creating a digital map of urban tree vegetation.

Prof. Nedkov gave a presentation on the Framework for Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (FIEA), and Kalina Stoyanova from the Ministry of Environment and Water and Bulgaria's national coordinator in the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) introduced the participants to the opportunities for involvement as experts in IPBES. Petar Bozakov from PENSOFT presented the activities of the BioAgora, CO-OP4CBD and RESPIN projects, and Prof. Miglena Zhiyanski and Assist. Prof. Elena Todorova from the Forest Research Institute at BAS presented the eLTER site Parangalitsa and drew attention to the inclusion of ecosystem services in the focus of regional development. The topics sparked many fruitful discussions among the participants who presented their ideas for the development of the CoP.

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SELINA is a European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101060415, which starts on 1 July 2022 and runs until 2027. The project involves 50 partner institutions from all 27 Member States of the European Union (including selected Overseas Territories), Norway, Switzerland, Israel and the UK, with Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) as the lead partner. SELINA (Science for Evidence-based and sustainabLe decisIons about NAtural capital) aims to change public and private sector environmental decision-making processes by improving people's understanding of biodiversity, ecosystem condition and ecosystem services and their integration into practice.