NATURVATION

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have the potential to respond to climate change, enhance biodiversity and improve environmental quality while contributing to economic regeneration and social well-being. Yet there is a substantial gap between the promise of NBS and their uptake.

To unlock the potential of NBS for sustainable urban development, NATURVATION will take a transdisciplinary, internationally comparative approach to: advance assessment approaches (Objective 1) to capture the multiple impacts & values of NBS to deliver a robust evidence base for decision-making; enable innovation (Objective 2) to identify the most promising governance, business/finance and participation models and how to overcome the systemic conditions that currently limit their use to support systemic integration; and generate momentum to realise the potential of NBS through co-design, co-development & co-implementation of new partnerships, knowledge, recommendations, processes and tools required to build capacity, enable replication and foster cultural change (Objective 3).

NATURVATION will work to support decision-makers in 3 ways. First, an evidence base and assessment processes will be developed to evaluate how NBS are being used and the extent of their ecological, economic, social and cultural contributions towards sustainability. Second, how innovation is taking place with NBS will be investigated with focus on the governance arrangements, business models, finance & citizen engagement needed to develop and implement these kinds of responses in cities around the world. The contexts within which NBS have to be established will be explored considering the challenges that they face. This will be done in partnership with municipal governments & stakeholders through Urban Regional Innovation Partnerships (URIPs) and a Task Force, as well as with the wider policy and practitioner communities, to create the knowledge, capacity, outputs and tools needed to build momentum for NBS on the ground.

The Urban Nature Atlas was created as part of the NATURVATION Project and is currently the most comprehensive database of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) for cities created to date. The Urban Nature Atlas has been produced as the result of a systematic survey of NBS interventions in 100 European cities and provides the basis for the analysis of socio-economic and innovation patterns associated with urban NBS in Europe. It contains almost 1000 examples of NBS from across 100 European cities.