KARMA

In common understanding, the core idea of KARMA is that our current actions determine our future circumstances. This KARMA project follows the same logic.

The partnership strives to make the construction sector, with its huge resource consumption and environmental impact, more circular, and thus to help put Europe on the path to a greener and climate-neutral future. For doing so, seven partners from five European countries (BE, DE, HU, IT, RO) cooperate to improve regional development policies. These include Regional Operational Programmes (ERDF & ESF+), region wide climate plans and strategies, as well as Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans. This way, KARMA aims to increase resource efficiency and optimise waste management and recycling practices in the six participating partner regions for public and private construction projects. Topics that will be addressed with the interregional activities include circular economy (CE) approaches for housing and restoration of buildings, construction and demolition waste and waste management, new business models, procurement, as well as governance.

The partners represent organisations with dedicated long-standing experience in CE as well as in the construction sector, e.g. Circular Flanders – and partners where a clear need for catching-up is defined, e.g. Regione Calabria. In addition, the project brings together local and regional project partners who complement each other with their different perspectives to learn to better bridge the different levels of governance. KARMA activities involve policy learning activities with interregional exchanges, living labs to jointly co-create and advance policy improvements with regional stakeholders, staff exchanges among the partner organisations, a self-reflexive learning approach as well as topic-specific working groups enriched by vast experiences and links of partners to other sources and contexts (e.g. Horizon projects, further EU Commission initiatives, Eurocities).