Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NATURESCAPES (NATURESCAPES: NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR CLIMATE RESILIENT, NATURE POSITIVE AND SOCIALLY JUST COMMUNITIES IN DIVERSE LANDSCAPES)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-12-01 do 2025-05-31
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.
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.
We have made significant steps to meet Objective 1 during this reporting period. This has involved development of a suite of new methodologies for advancing the assessment of NBS at the landscape scale, with a particular focus on understanding how urban-regions ecologies and ecosystem services change over time and across space. We have also strengthened previous approaches to the analysis of the social, political, and economic dimensions of NBS through the creation of our Naturescapes database and undertaken extensive data collection and analysis to create nearly 400 new profiles of NBS globally. This has enabled us to develop our initial work on the benefits of NBS across landscapes for climate, biodiversity and communities and to explore how different forms of configuration shape these benefits, in turn with implications for how we can understand the ways in which the benefits of multiple NBS do/not add up to more than the sum of their parts and with what consequences for which communities.
The first period of NATURESCAPES has involved progress towards Objective 2 through developing the analytical tools and case-study evidence to provide the basis for developing insights as to how the implementation of NBS is/not currently being supported across urban-regions in Europe, the USA and LAC and how this in turn is shaping the development of naturescapes in these FUAs. This will provide the foundations through which to examine in depth the ways in which the values and knowledge of communities and stakeholders are being included in naturescapes, and how this can be enhanced, the ways in which official and public imaginaries shape how relations between nature and society are established and develop over time, how futuring techniques are being used to bring particular ideas about nature into decision-making settings, and the ways in which finance and governance arrangements do/not provide the basis for transformative change.
In the first period of the project we have sought to build our understanding of the nature and dynamics of transformative change and to establish spaces for transdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue to provide the foundation for how the project works towards enabling NBS and Naturescapes to support action for climate, nature and social justice, by, for example, establishing our Collaboratory and organising the Spring School for ECRs (Objective 3).
The first period of NATURESCAPES has involved progress towards Objective 2 through developing the analytical tools and case-study evidence to provide the basis for developing insights as to how the implementation of NBS is/not currently being supported across urban-regions in Europe, the USA and LAC and how this in turn is shaping the development of naturescapes in these FUAs. This will provide the foundations through which to examine in depth the ways in which the values and knowledge of communities and stakeholders are being included in naturescapes, and how this can be enhanced, the ways in which official and public imaginaries shape how relations between nature and society are established and develop over time, how futuring techniques are being used to bring particular ideas about nature into decision-making settings, and the ways in which finance and governance arrangements do/not provide the basis for transformative change.
In the first period of the project we have sought to build our understanding of the nature and dynamics of transformative change and to establish spaces for transdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue to provide the foundation for how the project works towards enabling NBS and Naturescapes to support action for climate, nature and social justice, by, for example, establishing our Collaboratory and organising the Spring School for ECRs (Objective 3).
This section will be updated as soon as there is more information to add.