Page 24 - NYY Muscat Call 2022 April 24

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entrepreneurship, and new service development should be ignited. Water and Humanity
together with the Global Forum set out to invite key parties for this purpose, offering an

inclusive platform for launching this agenda at the next annual Global Forum, to take place in
26
France, date to be decided.

4.8) Co-Nature´ing

Deepening the agenda brought by participatory approaches and co-creation by citizens in the

processes around selecting, designing and implementing NBS, needs to be extended to
encompass “co-nature´ing”. With this we refer to a change not just of mind-set, but more

fundamentally, of perception, abilities, and actions, in turn linked to values. Co-nature´ing
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implies linking to, and associating with, nature. While it draws on awareness, it also reflects
a choice of caring for - and recognising - being part of our wider ecosystem, where nature´s

resources such as air, water, soil, flora & fauna, are not taken for granted.

It is not, as often assumed, or pretended, that values could or should be ignored. The
unrelenting coverage and advocacy of indigenous peoples forming what may prove our last

stand against the forces of exploitation and destruction of nature’s most precious resources,

demonstrates what values are about. So does the ample evidence of nature’s healing power.
For those in deep animosity, staring into the abyss, young as well as old recurrently prove

that one remedy alone may show up, shinrin-yoku, connecting and spending time with nature.

This is not something we pick up by desk-work, or social media. It has to do with shared
experience, emotion, engagement, responsibility, empathy, planet-awareness. No doubt, most

of all, our early-life perceptions of attachment, biological embedding, have lasting

consequences, through life, passing also from one generation to another. Yet, there is hardly a
trace in the institutional fabric of modern society by way of guidance and attention in these

respects.

25 Ms. Dalia Badawi, Cairo, Ms. Aasia, Khan, Lahore Chamber of Commerce, and Dr. Buthaina Al Wahibi,
Oman Water and Waste water, Muscat.
26 Those to be invited include representatives from Women for Water Partnerships (www.womenforwater.org)

and EU Women in Tech (www.europeanwomenintech.com)
27 The concept was coined by Americo Matéus, GUDA, Portugal, at the Water & Humanity conference. Dr.
Anna Grichting, Switzerland and Senior Fellow, University of Vermont, pointed to the responsibility of
humans encompassing other lifeforms.

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