On 22 and 23 September 2026, between Ragusa and Ferla, we hosted the Kick-off Meeting of the transfer phase of URWAN – Urban Regenerative Water Avant-garde(N), an Interreg Euro-MED project. The partnership, around 25 people from Albania, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, launched the process that will bring the project’s tools to seven new Mediterranean municipalities: Alzira (Spain), Atripalda (Italy), Durrës (Albania), Palmela (Portugal), Patras (Greece), Sesimbra and Setúbal (Portugal).
For Svi.Med., it was an opportunity to welcome the consortium to Sicily and to exchange views, both in the meeting room and out in the field, on Nature-based Solutions (NbS): from those already up and running to those the seven municipalities are beginning to imagine.
In Ragusa, at BAM – Break nell’Abitato Moderno, the work started from the tools: the URWAN Enabler Pack and Checklist, presented together with the lead partner ANCI Lazio and MedCities, while each partner introduced its municipality and the places where the upcoming activities could take shape. This first exchange brought out the principle that guided both days. “Before choosing a Nature-based Solution, we need to be clear about the problem we want to solve,” Giulio Conte of IRIDRA reminded participants. “And often, many small interventions spread across an area work better, and are easier to manage, than a single large-scale project.”
In the afternoon, we brought to the table a topic we care deeply about: taking NbS out of their own sector and into projects that deal with something else. Nature-based Solutions can find a place even in seemingly distant fields, such as mobility. “We need to move beyond a sectoral view of interventions,” explained Barbara Sarnari. “When knowledge and skills come together, NbS deliver benefits across several areas and improve communities’ quality of life.”
The day ended outdoors, with a walk through the Vallata Santa Domenica, the green corridor in the heart of Ragusa that has just been regenerated through a project promoted by the Municipality. It is a place we know well: as Svi.Med., we supported the Municipality in a participatory process designed precisely to give the Vallata back to its residents.
On the second day we moved to Ferla, where we were welcomed by the Mayor, Michelangelo Giansiracusa, and by Giuseppe Vinci, Councillor for Ecology and Urban Hygiene. At the Valle dell’Anapo Comprehensive School we visited the Wall2Water green wall, built through the NAWAMED project: it collects greywater from the school’s washbasins, treats it through plants and reuses it to flush the toilets. The system has grown over the years: today a rainwater harvesting tank keeps the plants healthy during the summer closure, and greywater from the changing rooms of the new sports facility next to the school will soon be added.
After the visit, at the municipal Auditorium, attention turned to the seven municipalities. Barbara Sarnari and Ilaria Principi (IRIDRA) presented Start Park, the community engagement process that has play as one of its main tools, and each delegation left with a dossier produced in the previous phase of the project. Then came the selected sites, discussed one by one with the IRIDRA team: all of them received a favourable opinion.
We take home one confirmation from these two days: transfer works when it adapts to each territory. The next stop is the URWAN School in Rome, in March, which will train the municipalities’ technical staff and those who will facilitate the Start Park processes with local communities.
