On Tuesday, 1 October 2024, the Italian Community of Practice held its second meeting, bringing together 25 participants to present and discuss some of Italy’s best practices and transformative case studies ("seeds of change"). These practices were gathered through a questionnaire distributed in the preceding months.

After a brief introduction outlining the objectives of the meeting, a general overview of all the collected best practices was presented. The practices were grouped according to shared themes, emphasizing synergies and common perspectives, allowing participants to see how different initiatives address similar challenges in transformative ways.

Participants were then divided into thematic breakout rooms based on their individual interests. The topics of these rooms were:

• Capacity building and participatory design to support decision-making processes,
• Integration of biodiversity and ecosystem services into territorial planning,
• Actions and strategies to protect and enhance of biodiversity.

In each breakout room, speakers introduced some of the best practices collected via the questionnaire, focusing on their transformative aspects. Key points discussed included how each practice stands out from traditional approaches, the identification of key leverage points to achieve desired outcomes, how long-term impacts are considered (especially in comparison to conventional practices), the inclusion of new knowledge, sectors, disciplines, or stakeholders, and how the results of these practices are intended to be explicitly integrated into decision-making processes.

The meeting concluded with an invitation to continue gathering more best practices, with the aim of presenting additional examples in a third meeting planned before the end of the year.