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Review: uptake of NBS
The EU wants to become sustainable, climate-neutral, climate resilient, fair, and prosperous by 2050. To reach that goal, a much wider adoption of NbS is needed. How to see the opportunities for NbS to take flight? Researchers from several countries in Europe published a review paper on this topic. One of the authors is dr. Marjolein Sterk, the project leader of Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilient and Circular Food Systems.
Greater uptake of NbS
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.