On September 8, 2026, the kick-off meeting of the RISE4UKRAINE international project consortium was held online. The kick-off meeting was divided into two events: an online meeting in September and an in-person meeting in Brussels in October.
 
The “Recovery and Innovation through Sustainable Ecosystems for Ukraine” (RISE4UKRAINE) project (Grant Agreement No. 101291285) is funded under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme. The research initiative aims to develop and implement innovative nature-based and biotechnological solutions for the recovery and sustainable development of war-affected regions of Ukraine in the sectors of agriculture, water and forest resources, restoration of degraded land, and infrastructure development.
 
The meeting began with the introduction of the RISE4UKRAINE Project Officer, Christel Millet, and the Policy Officer of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), Tomasz Calikowski.
 
The meeting was attended by the Land Management Institute of NAAS working group, comprising Shamil Ibatullin, Oksana Sakal, Andriy Dorosh, Roman Kharytonenko, Nataliia Komarova, Bohdanna Zaiachkivska, and Valerii Olishevskyi.
 
During the meeting, Oksana Sakal presented the Land Management Institute of NAAS to the consortium, outlining its main areas of activity and research and briefly highlighting the role of the Institute and its working group in the project. The Institute plays a key role in the initial phase of the project, as it leads the implementation of the first work package and Task 1.1, which lay the foundation for the further implementation of the project.
 

 
As part of the organisational presentations, other institutions representing Ukraine in the project also introduced themselves, namely the Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture of NAAS, the Ukrainian Green Building Council, and the Analytical Centre “Smart Country”, which represents the consortium partner — the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, whose participation in the consortium as a beneficiary is limited by Ukrainian legislation.
 

 
The project was then presented in general by Afroditi Stamelou, the RISE4UKRAINE project coordinator representing White Research SRL. She presented all the key components of the project, including its structure, implementation plan, methodology, and pilot regions.
 

 
The pilot regions are key to the implementation and subsequent scaling-up of the results of the RISE4UKRAINE project. They include Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Odesa, and Kherson regions. All of them have been affected by hostilities to varying degrees, which is why each plays an important role in the project. Each pilot region has a designated consortium representative responsible for its implementation. The Land Management Institute of NAAS is responsible for implementing the project in Kyiv region, while the Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture of NAAS is responsible for implementation in two regions — Odesa and Kherson — and the Ukrainian Green Building Council is responsible for Ivano-Frankivsk region.
 

 
The meeting then moved to its key component — the presentation of the first work package and the tasks included in it.
 
Shamil Ibatullin delivered an overview presentation of the first work package, “Mapping and assessment of environmental damage and humanitarian needs” (WP1), providing an overall overview of its objectives and key indicators. General approaches to organising the implementation of tasks within the work package were also highlighted.
 

 
Andriy Dorosh presented Task 1.1, “Geo-spatial and environmental mapping of affected areas,” outlining the methodology for implementing this task and the detailed action plan of the Land Management Institute of NAAS for the first six months of the project. In particular, the key implementation strategy and approaches to data collection, which will form the basis for the subsequent implementation of the project, were presented in detail.
 
The other tasks were presented by their respective task leaders. Task 1.2. “Assessment of the humanitarian needs with a focus on identifying opportunities for deploying biobased and nature-based solutions,” was presented by Sofia Michopoulou from White Research SRL; Task 1.3. “Assessment of regional value chains along with available biomass, waste and residue streams” by John Vos from Biomass Technology Group; Task 1.4. “Mapping policy frameworks for green reconstruction” by Peter Canciani from Iniziativa Centro Europea; and Task 1.5. “Identification of Bio-based and Nature-based Solutions for green reconstruction and best examples used in post-conflict regions” by Alexandr Iscenco from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
 
Overall, the participants’ attention was focused on methods for collecting and integrating geospatial data on environmental and infrastructure damage, the application of GIS technologies and satellite monitoring, the assessment of pilot areas at the level of individual territorial communities, as well as addressing security and legal issues related to the use of data under martial law.
 
The Land Management Institute of NAAS team expresses its gratitude to all colleagues for participating in the consortium kick-off meeting, as well as to White Research SRL for organizing it. We look forward to the second part of the consortium meeting in Brussels on October 14.