Multi-stakeholder dialogue platform to promote nature-based solutions to societal challenges: follow-up project

The action should aim to build upon the achievements of ThinkNature and further develop and consolidate an effective and self-sustainable EU community of innovators and practitioners and think-and-do-tanks to promote the design, development, replication and upscaling of nature-based solutions at the European and global scale.

The action should, on the basis of continuous and strategically driven stakeholder dialogue, exchanges of practices and experiences and sharing of expertise related to the various social, economic, financial, environmental, educational, institutional, regulatory and cultural NBS-relevant aspects, across multiple scales (local, regional, national and EU):

• further develop and maintain an online open source stakeholders platform that would facilitate the interactions;
• develop a business plan to make such a platform financially self-sustainable;
• identify specific domains and priorities where further research and innovation is needed for marketable nature-based solutions;
• establish NBS hubs and organize communication and outreach campaigns and regular events in all Member States, involving, as appropriate, international networks and environmental communicators and targeting all relevant stakeholders involved, including the scientific community, in the overall NBS value chain;
• facilitate the clustering of current and upcoming EU-funded nature-based solutions relevant research and innovation projects and other EU or national initiatives;
• assist the European Commission in organizing science-policy workshops and drafting briefings and contributions to EU policies related to nature, environment, climate, water, etc. Appropriate links with other relevant policy platforms such as Climate-ADAPT[[http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/]] and BISE[[https://biodiversity.europa.eu/]] should be ensured;
• develop guidelines for practitioners with state-of-the-art NBS design practices, protocols and standards;
• facilitate the development and mainstreaming of NBS-related professional training and the inclusion of NBS in high-education curricula (as, for example, NBS for architects and urban planners; ecosystem services for engineers, etc.), and Masters;
• promote international cooperation with key strategic international partners[[Such as CELAC countries, China, Belmont Forum, South East Asia]];
• proposals shall address all of the above points. The platform must ensure that all evidence, data and information will be accessible through the Oppla portal.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 2 million for a period of up to 4 years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have a high – but largely untapped – potential for delivering multiple ecosystem services (such as carbon sequestration, soil and water retention and purification, pollination, increased human well-being… ) to address diverse societal challenges with a systemic and innovative approach. An effective and self-sustainable multi-stakeholder platform that fosters dialogue, interactions, knowledge and information sharing, collaboration and think-and-do-tanks among relevant stakeholders is necessary to support the understanding and promote the use of nature-based solutions and speed up market up-take. Stakeholders include science, policy, administration, business (including SMEs), society (including NGOs, CSOs, and citizens as appropriate), public and private investors.

The establishment of such platform is currently being undertaken by ThinkNature[[https://www.think-nature.eu/]], with support from Oppla[[https://oppla.eu/ Developed by FP7-funded projects OPERAs and OpenNESS forknowledge on ecosystem services, natural capital and nature-based solutions;]] and Biodiversa[[http://www.biodiversa.org/ Funded under the Horizon 2020 ERA-NET COFUND scheme]]. ThinkNature is an ongoing CSA funded under SC5 WP 2016 that is due to terminate end 2019. The Oppla portal is developing as the EU NBS knowledge repository, supporting access, sharing and marketing of nature-based solutions knowledge, including from NBS EU-funded projects.

Actions are expected to lead to:

• effective and self-sustainable EU community of innovators, practitioners and think-and-do-tanks; identification of knowledge gaps and user needs; assessment of market potential for NBS;
• enhanced awareness among public authorities, the private sector and society at large about the advantages and any risks of NBS and therefore a wider use of these solutions as opposed to or in combination with grey infrastructure;
• improved cooperation and synergies with key strategic international partners and the emergence of a global market for nature-based solutions.