The NATURESCAPES project addresses the urgent challenge of realising the transformative potential of nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate action, biodiversity preservation, and social justice. To do so, it is guided by three core objectives:
Objective 1: Advance the knowledge frontier through novel assessment approaches capable of evaluating landscape scale synergies and trade-offs of NBS assemblages for climate, biodiversity and communities
Objective 2: Evaluate the socio-political conditions and dynamics of NBS implementation to identify the values, visions, governance, finance, and engagement needed to support effective and just naturescapes
Objective 3: Enable the transformative potential of NBS by examining, developing, and trialling diverse theories of change, interventions and training designed to address systemic, structural, and capacity constraints.
In following these our intention is to contribute to a step change in how and for whom NBS are used across urban, rural and coastal landscapes in Europe, the USA and LAC, reflecting the priorities of the HORIZON-CL6-2022-COMMUNITIES-01-05. Given the project’s focus on the social, political and economic challenges of NBS development and implementation, we focus on how to improve the ‘societal readiness level’ of NBS using the guidance developed by the Innovation Fund Denmark. We focus especially on undertaking research that generates a greater understanding of the problem and potential solutions for ensuring both effective and just NBS (what are defined as SRL1-SRL2; the focus of Objectives 1 & 2); work that tests and validates these solutions with communities and stakeholders in real-world settings (termed SRL3-SRL6; realised through Objective 3); and which in turn refines and replicates these approaches in diverse conditions in ways that support transformative change in and through the implementation of NBS (defined as SLR7-8; undertaken through our Impact Pathways). To operationalise our objectives, our research investigates naturescapes in diverse socio-cultural-economic and geographical settings across 30 functional urban areas (FUA) with a specific focus on twelve case-studies in the EU, LAC, and USA. The FUA unit of analysis was developed by the European Commission and the OECD to provide a means through which to compare urban areas globally through capturing “meaningful connections between cities and their surrounding areas”.
Our work examines the ways in which NBS relate to one another physically and ecologically, as well as how they are (and indeed, are not) being assembled into naturescapes, to understand emerging synergies and trade-offs and the consequences for different NBS assemblages for people and nature. Across each of our Objectives we are therefore concerned with understanding the dynamics of individual NBS interventions and with the ways in which their value, benefits and potential are shaped in relation to one another, to the places and networks of which they form part, and to the landscapes in which they are situated.
Our Objectives underpin our four Impact Goals: (1) Enhancing nature-society dialogue; (2) Fostering inclusive urban-regional development with NBS; (3) Strengthening NBS governance and implementation; and (4) Advancing policy for transformative NBS in the EU and internationally.
Led by Utrecht University, the NATURESCAPES consortium brings together expertise across the sciences, social sciences and humanities from five European Universities, The Nature Conservancy, WWF and Grupo Laera (a leading consultancy in NBS and ecosystem services in LAC), and an international Collaboratory of stakeholders. Together, we have adopted a transdisciplinary approach to take forward the realisation of NBS that are transformative for climate change, biodiversity and communities.
