80 urban forest experts joined the international meeting

URBforDAN project has come to an end with the big final conference in the city of the leading partner, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. After 3 years of intensive project work and international networking about 80 people from the seven partner cities Budapest, Vienna, Cluj-Napoca, Ivano-Frankivsk, Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana as well as the associated partners Prague and Podgorica, aswell as stakeholders, experts and inquisitive people from the fields of forestry and planning participated in the conference.

"Best Idea Contest"-Winners were awarded in a ceremony

On day 1 the winners of the "Best Idea Contest" were awarded in a ceremony by the Deputy Mayor of the City of Ljubljana Janez Koželj. And these are the price winners: Third place went to the project "Hug a tree and Forest Library" by Vivien Novák from Budapest, a landscape designer. She created specially designed trees that, especially in times of pandemic, invite us to hug. And she created a library made of wood for use in the forest, where beautiful finds can be placed for those who follow. The 2nd place went to businessman Vitalii Paseniuk from Ivano- Frankivsk, who created "Culture Forest", a place in the forest that brings creativity and nature into interaction. And the first place went to Izabela Kuzle from Zagreb with her idea "Forest Recycling", i.e. building furniture and path construction in the forest from "found objects", i.e. from branches and trunks that are present in the forest anyway.

Online viewers attended the Conference

The following day, the final conference in Ljubljana was also streamed live on Youtube and Facebook. The conference was opened by Deputy Mayor of the City of Ljubljana Prof. Janez Koželj, who also conveyed the greetings of Mayor Zoran Janković, who was unfortunately unable to attend. Welcome speeches were given by Janez Logar, Director of the Slovenia Forest Service, Gusztav Csomor from Interreg Danube Programme and Luka Sešel, URBforDAN project manager from Ljubljana.

The way forward for our urban forests

This was followed by technical presentations, among others by Simone Borelli from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), via video link by Rik de Vreese from the European Forest Institute, Robert Hostnik, Slovenia Forest Services. The highly interesting and very productive conference day on urban forests was concluded by a panel discussion entitled "The way forward for our urban forests" with political representatives of Danube cities and representatives of the Interreg Danube Programme. At the evening reception for the project partners and associated partners the sustainable success of the international project was celebrated accordingly. If you want to see more pictures, have a look on