Going through the Co-Impact tool, you will have noticed that there are several decisions that are required. The first decision involves going through lists of possible indicators under environmental, health & well-being, social and economic categories – many of which you may not recognise, but could be interesting/relevant to your project. After selecting some of these (by ticking the boxes), you will then be asked to review a more precise list of indicators drawn from a wide range of nature-based projects across Europe – broken into ‘Core’ and ‘Feature’ indicators (see example below).

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Over the past 5-10 years, project teams across Europe have agreed which indicators are the most likely to be relevant to sustainability projects and classified these as ‘Core’ indicators. If you can deliver impact under a ‘Core’ indicator, you are more likely to be able to explain your impact to stakeholders and also find resources to help you report your impact. If a ‘Feature’ indicator is more relevant to your project, though, you should not avoid using it – but rather consider carefully what it will take to gather information to report impact and explain to stakeholders what your impact is. You will also be asked if you wish to select some ‘Participatory Planning and Governance’ indicators for your project impact reporting (see screenshot below). These are related to the way you accomplish your aims as it may be the case the process of developing and managing the urban forest is as important as the result.

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