After four years of work, the partners of the LCA4Regions project met physically for the last time at a concluding conference in Brussels to reflect on how sustainable development processes can be strengthened in the regions. Following to this project final event, the LCA4Regions partners gathered to organise the closure of the project and comment their feedback to evaluate the project.
The project gave partners the opportunity to develop and widen their knowledge and skills on life cycle methodologies and to discover some interesting and undesirable side-effects of business/personal actions or policy decisions. The positive experiences and results of the project convinced the partners to further promote life cycle thinking at all levels.
Despite COVID pandemic prevented on physical exchange of experiences, events were perfectly executed remotely and partners continued learning from each other.
The capacity building and results of this project will not end this July 2023, several partners commented during the meeting current actions and future ideas that go beyond the action plans of the LCA4Regions project. For example, in Finland, a new project will start in the near future with a special mention on life cycle management, Lombardy Region has set up a collaboration agreement with the Politecnico di Milano funding a PhD student working on textile sector using the life cycle approach, Navarra will assess the consumption footprint of the region following the methodology of the JRC or Slovenia will promote the use of life cycle methodologies and establish contacts between expert and those who wish to apply this can of approaches.
We can tell that partners expectations were greatly fulfilled by both exchanging experience and gaining new knowledge within the project topics and we strongly believe that the stablished international cooperation will not end with the closure of the LCA4Regions project. In addition, not only the project has served for this interregional networking, but also for a stronger regional networking at each partner local level.
This meeting was concluded with an appetising snack of quality products labelled Reyno Gourmet of Navarra: organic, integrated production, origin or protected geographical indication or artisan production.
