Image Source: Helmut Ignat
In order to successfully plan our project, we also take good look at how other sites managed to overcome the similar issues that the Vacaresti Nature Park has. In our process, our group was able to find many case studies which tackled the issues we are facing in this project but chose to focus on four sites: London, Thessaloniki, New York, and the Pantanal. From these case studies, we were able to pull out many commonalities and identify methods which could be applied to our project.
One practice that has been useful in other parks is surveying local residents and stakeholders for opinions. These opinions can be used to direct the development of the park. In the case of Thessaloniki, they surveyed the locals to collect suggestions on how the urban greenspace situation could be improved. In Paraguay, the school teachers were surveyed for feedback on the education program development. By collecting surveys from the public, we could obtain and analyze information, feedback, and concerns about the park, which will assist us in determining the best practices for the park that pleases the majority of the public.
Another practice that could be applied to our project is educating the public about wetland conservation. In the London Wetland Center, programs and workshops with various activities were implemented aside from the traditional classes for students to make sure that the park visitors are educated about the impact of the park (Harden, 2011) . In Benjamin Aceval, Paraguay, a teaching program was implemented in the school system with wetland maps and field trips in order to raise awareness in students (Claus et al., 2018). This education aspect could be further implemented in the park development to hold events, field trips and classes to encourage the general public awareness.
In addition, collaborating with other organizations was seen to be good practice. To conserve the ecosystem in the Pantanal and the New York site, the locals have been working with various NGOs to prevent further destruction of human activities. Thessaloniki site had a similar approach by working with other organizations to improve the greenspace models in the city. Thus, it would be preferable for us to cooperate with other organizations in Bucharest to improve the park further.
Lastly, one method which many sites employed was cooperating with government officials to pass more legislation to promote conservation. In New York, they cooperated with State and Federal partners to revise wetlands mitigation guidance, created a wetlands mitigation banking for public projects, and strengthened wetland conditions. For the case of the Pantanal, the locals and the NGOs worked with the government for passing conservation laws and influenced the industries to take responsibility for waste processing before dumping them into the water of the wetlands. This method, however effective it might be, is deemed to be difficult for us to implement due to the complexity of the political system in Romania.
With these common approaches and the researched background, we gain more insight to what our project looks like and be able to devise a method to help develop Vacaresti Nature Park to fit the expectation.
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