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NL2120’s nature-inclusive vision for the future wins WUR Impact Award 2023
The team behind NL2120, the nature-oriented vision for the future of the Netherlands, has won the second edition of the WUR Impact Award. NL2120 brought together research from the entire spectrum of Wageningen University & Research to develop a hopeful vision for the Netherlands in roughly 100 years. “To achieve that ideal, we need to cooperate with nature and understand that climate, soil and biodiversity are intricately connected,” team lead Tim van Hattum summarises the key message of NL2120. The NL 2120 programme is part of the overarching research programme Nature-Inclusive Transitions.
Every year, the WUR Impact Award is awarded to a team of researchers from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) that has made knowledge and research applicable in practice in hopes of inspiring other colleagues to do the same. This social impact could take many forms, but it is important that the researchers took extra steps to ensure their knowledge reached interested parties, engaged in collaborations and made their science applicable. The WUR Impact Award is made possible by the Wageningen Ambassadors. The Wageningen Ambassadors are alumni of WUR and all leading figures in business and government who gladly offer support to WUR. By using their network, experience and financial resources, they aim to build a bridge between WUR and society.
“We are running out of time to solve major issues,” jury president and Wageningen ambassador Marcel Schuttelaar stressed during the award ceremony on 30 May. “If we want to speed up this process, research will have to make impact.”
The programme NL2120 receives additional funding made available by the
Wageningen Ambassadors, the team of researchers has won a tile on the Wageningen Campus Walk of Fame and additional support for conveying their message to further increase the impact of the programme, both within the Netherlands and in an international context.
A hopeful vision for the future
NL2120 certainly took those extra steps. Tim Van Hattum, Programme Leader Climate at WUR, showed an impressive overview of the sheer reach of their future vision, from keynotes to newspaper articles to discussions with policy makers. “We saw a shift in national governance,” Van Hattum explained. “In November last year, the government made water and soil a guiding factor in spatial planning.” Moreover, the cabinet assigned NL2120 a growth fund of 110 million euros. Jury member Richard Harrison called the knowledge and innovation programme a catalyst for change. “NL2120 has succeeded in conveying their hopeful vision for the future to many strata of society.”
“We generally only present doom scenarios when it comes to climate change,” Tim van Hattum stated when pitching NL2120. “We believe we should not just discuss visions of the future we seek to prevent, but also visions we wish to make a reality.” To substantiate this vision, the programme brought together knowledge from a variety of different areas of research. Together, researchers developed an idea of a future-proof Netherlands that cooperates with nature to mitigate the consequences of climate change and increase biodiversity. This hopeful vision has also reached interested parties abroad, and the team is currently working on a vision for Europe in 2120.
Telling the story of impact
“We need to tell the story of our impact,” Gerlinde van Vilsteren, team lead Knowledge for Society, emphasised during the award ceremony. To help WUR researchers realise and communicate their impact, Impact Guidelines were presented during the ceremony. The interactive document features nine tips, which can help programme managers, project leaders and business developers realise impact. The Impact Guidelines feature real-life examples and theoretical depth. Van Vilsteren referred to last year’s Impact Award, Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling (Fighting Food Waste Together), to illustrate one of those tips. That programme successfully translated knowledge about food waste into concrete action items for a wide range of parties involved.
One of the steps on the road to impact is being together and celebrating our victories
Sjoukje Heimovaara MSc, president of the Executive Board, concluded the ceremony. “Today, we have seen that our teams are able to spread knowledge anywhere.” She stressed that collaboration is essential to achieving impact. This goes for collaboration with social partners as well as cooperation within the team. “One of the steps on the road to impact is being together and celebrating our victories.”
The other nominees of the WUR Impact Award were: Bioasphalt, the initiative for replacing the fossil binding agent in asphalt for a 100% sustainable ingredient, Taste Lessons, a national educational programme focussing on sustainable, healthy dietary habits for children at primary schools, and strip cropping, a project to increase agricultural crop diversity.