NBSPLUS

Context

Human-induced climate impacts and biodiversity loss severely impact ecosystems and communities globally. Holistically designed NbS offer cost-effective, multifunctional measures safeguarding biodiversity, enhancing water cycle sustainability and promoting well-being. However, understanding of factors affecting NbS multifunctionality remains limited, along with a lack of integrated assessment methods and standardization, including baselines for NbS benefits. Existing services typically prioritize sector-specific products/outcomes, impeding the advancement of transdisciplinary NbS approaches.

NBSPLUS aims to overcome these limitations, launching the concept of NbS Services. It will develop user-oriented knowledge, methods, and decision aids to facilitate informed planning, addressing societal risks and potential trade-offs of current/future NbS. Leveraging diverse expertise within the consortium, from governance processes to participatory modelling approaches and climate/water services, and through engagement with local stakeholders, novel solutions will be developed and tested in three use-cases on two continents, demonstrating applicability across land-use types and decision frameworks.

Main objectives

Addressing the contribution of NbS for just transformative change, NBSPLUS will develop and upscale effective participatory planning for NbS, promoting balanced awareness and consideration of biodiversity, justice and well-being aspects in rural and urban climate resilience planning.

Main activities

NBSPLUS will employ a suite of transdisciplinary approaches, applied with an integrated systems science lens, engaging stakeholders (including marginalized groups) and using citizen science (CS), to integrate and upscale local knowledge for transformational interventions. The main activities include to:

• Develop a multi-level governance framework to assess the aims, effectiveness and social-ecological impacts of NbS, also accounting for societal equity/justice;
• Explore the value of novel bioindicators, and potential for collection through CS approaches, to develop a habitat-overarching biodiversity monitoring framework for assessing the ecological consequences of NbS adaptation;
• Stress-test NbS efficacy to resolve land-use and climate-induced pressures through co-production of novel design (extreme weather) events and integration into existing impact models;
• Co-design scalable, integrated models/tools for increasing transparency and stakeholder engagement in city-to-catchment scale NbS assessments.

These activities will enable the results of the Project to be disseminated via the co-production of a comprehensive design guide for NbS planning and management, as well as through a virtual governance workshop, which generates a pathway for leveraging outcomes beyond the project via a multi-language policy brief.

Project outcomes stemming from the establishment of the NbS Services concept are expected to:

• Promote participatory governance through evidence-based and scalable adaptation planning;
• Improve synergies across local-to-national policy objectives, ensuring NbS will be beneficial for biodiversity and just transformative change; and
• Strengthen adaptive capacity by enhancing science-based decision-making, and transnational cooperation and cross-learning within resilience and disaster risk management and planning.