Building climate resilience through nature-based solutions in Europe: A review of enabling knowledge, finance and governance frameworks

Elisa Calliari*, Sergio Castellari, McKenna Davis, Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, Juliette Martin, Jaroslav Mysiak, Teresa Pastor, Emiliano Ramieri, Anna Scolobig, Marjolein Sterk, Clara Veerkamp, Laura Wendling, Marianne Zandersen

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    40 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The European Union (EU) has firmly positioned itself as a global leader in promoting and implementing nature-based solutions (NBS). The recently released EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, and Forest Strategy - all representing key pillars of the ambitious European Green Deal (EGD) - rely on NBS to both preserve and restore ecosystem integrity and increase climate resilience. Although research and policy in Europe have advanced the conceptualization and operationalization of NBS, a much wider adoption is needed to reach the ambitious goals of the EGD and fulfil its vision of transforming into a sustainable, climate-neutral, climate resilient, fair, and prosperous EU by 2050. In this paper, we review recent EU-supported research, policy, and practices to identify critical dimensions that still need to be addressed for greater uptake of NBS. While recognising the multiple societal challenges NBS can target, we build on the key messages from the ‘5th European Climate Change Adaptation conference ECCA 2021′ and focus our analysis on NBS for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. We screen a wide range of NBS cases across the EU and identify-three core challenges to implementation: the lack of a comprehensive evidence base on the effectiveness of NBS to address targeted challenges; the need for a greater involvement of the private sector in financing NBS; and opportunities for enhancing stakeholder engagement in the successful design and implementation of NBS. We take these challenges as the starting point for a broader reflection and critical discussion on the role of i) knowledge, i) finance, including investments in NBS and divestments from nature-negative projects, and iii) governance and policy frameworks to enable the uptake of NBS. We conclude by identifying options for the EU to foster the uptake of NBS in research, policy and practice.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number100450
    JournalClimate Risk Management
    Volume37
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jul 2022
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Funding

    This work was supported by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme through the grant to the budget of the PHUSICOS Project (https://phusicos.eu/) [grant agreement No. 776681], the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Security through support to the Wageningen University & Research Programme on ‘Food Security and Valuing Water’ and ‘Circular and Climate neutral’ and the European Environment Agency through support to the European Topic Centre on Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC/CCA).

    Keywords

    • Climate change adaptation
    • Disaster risk reduction
    • European Green Deal
    • European Union
    • Nature-based solutions

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