SPIRE Journal 2: The project moves forward
Baia Mare was historically a metallurgical area, but the city is currently transitioning from its past as Romania's mining capital towards a social, economic, and environmental development model that is sustainable. The city and its citizens are ready to move into a new socio-economic era, but the persistence of Heavy Metal (HM) pollution in the urban area is still significant and exceeds acceptable limits by five times. Solutions need to be found for the 627 hectares of contaminated land that negatively affects the local ecosystems and residents’ health.
SPIRE’s challenge is to test an integrated and innovative strategy capable of:
- Recovering contaminated land and starting long-term phytoremediation and land revalorization process (with a Remediation Toolkit and Adaptive Site Management Application)
- Co-creating new bio-based solutions for pressing urban issues, like developing new ecofriendly building materials or reducing carbon emissions, adopting a replicable approach to supporting local circular business models.
- Finding alternatives to fossil fuel to foster sustainable energy transition for potential capitalization at functional urban area level.
- Supporting participation and a behavioral shift, thanks to the immaterial Local Environmental Utility (iLEU), a novel digital solution to reward environmentally friendly actions.
Partnership:
- City of Baia Mare
- Urbasofia SRL
- Indeco Soft
- Transilvania Branch of the Romanian Association for Electronic Industry and Software (ARIES Transilvania)
- Baia Mare Metropolitan Area
- University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca (USAMV)
- Green Energy Association (GEA)
Executive summary
This is the second journal of the Smart Post-Industrial Regenerative Ecosystem (SPIRE) project since its creation on 1st September 2019. The impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic has shown how visionary the SPIRE project is. The reclaiming and enhancing of Baia Mare’s green infrastructure, which is clearly linked to health and wellbeing, is now particularly relevant in times of climate and health crises.
During the second year of the project's implementation, the city has continued its transition from its past as Romania's mining capital towards a new sustainable development model applying Nature-Based Solutions. Romplumb, Ferneziu, Colonia Topitorilor, Urbis, and Craica are the five pilot sites being reclaimed in the city under the SPIRE project to become strategic green infrastructure. They will be integrated into the future network of healthy natural and semi-natural areas within the BM 2050 Master Plan sustainable use of land strategy.
Despite the fact that contamination from heavy metals constitutes a genuine global health concern, in Baia Mare citizens’ recognition of environmental issues is limited. The municipality is working towards raising awareness among the population of the dangers of pollution and the urgency to decontaminate the sites. The ecological transformation of the city's pilot sites has incorporated intense community work, with awareness and communications campaigns, citizen engagement activities, and co-design participatory workshops, among others.
To support and enhance this participatory approach, the City of Baia Mare has become a facilitator of the iLEU reward system (a digital token) to sponsor environmental-friendly actions and initiatives, both public and private. Additionally, a Circular Economic Startup, Accelerator, and Mentoring Programme has been initiated. Three finalists will develop their ideas built upon bio-based solutions to foster the sustainable transition of energy and materials.
On the one hand The SPIRE project reaps the benefits of European, national, and local policies for some of the matters it addresses, whereas it also deals with the lack of comprehensive policies at a national level on other issues. These experiences provide insights which allow the project to evaluate and enable new and alternative urban governance models for the future.
This journal presents a detailed analysis of the UIA challenges in the SPIRE project, measuring their risk from low to high. The participative approach and cross-department working, present a low risk in implementation. Medium risk is identified for leadership, monitoring and evaluation and communication. Finally, high risk is present for public procurement challenges and upscaling.
Sustainable use of land and nature based solutions
