LAND4CLIMATE aims to deploy and demonstrate the implementation of nature-based solutions (NBS) on private land. NBS are inspired by nature or natural processes. They promise to enhance to the resilience of landscapes and urban settlements. But its implementation is still in its infancy, especially as these measures require more land that is often owned privately. With the focus on the implementation on private land, LAND4CLIMATE contributes to a more transformative, climate-resilient Europe.
LAND4CLIMATE designs and evaluates NBS on private land by implementing and scaling up with innovative land policy strategies for a in six study areas with associated replication areas in the continental biogeographical region of Europe: Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Romania and Slovakia. Therefore, LAND4CLIMATE brings together a consortium of five universities, six local authorities at the local, regional and state levels authorities as well as representatives of national parks, actors in community development and urban planning as well as NGOs.
The main objective of LAND4CLIMATE is to co-design and validate NBS on private land. For achieving this goal, land policy and business models are applied, such as land readjustment schemes, strategic land leases and easements, reduction of development fees, etc., which activate private landowners to support the implementation of NBS. That way, more NBS on private land can be realized to ultimately reduce climate risks and increase climate resilience to beneficiaries (i.e. local communities that benefit from the effects of NBS). By involving not only local and regional authorities but also landowners (NBS providers) and local communities (NBS beneficiaries), these land policies and business models thus drive a systemic transformation of climate-resilient regions in Europe.
LAND4CLIMATE moves on four frontiers beyond state-of-the-art:
(1) It creates new knowledge emerging from an inter-systemic approach to climate resilience. Intersystemic approach describes the integration of water management systems, ecosystems, and systems of land use.
(2) It considers NBS not as individual measures but embedded in a large and complex system to be effective and efficient. Currently, research and practice on the implementation of NBS often focus on the realization of individual measures, often at small scales and on public land only.
(3) It puts the perspective of land central in the implementation of NBS – this is a major paradigm shift in the way NBS are realized hitherto. Hitherto, when NBS are to be implemented by public authorities, technical or hydrological issues are dealt with first before addressing land management, civil engineering, technical aspects, etc.
(4) The focus on private land is highly innovative and new. Property in land is in Europe constitutionally very well protected. Accordingly, interventions in private land uses are complex, lengthy, and expensive. The focus on “private” land is used deliberately to emphasize the tension between the public interest and the private interest.
These ambitions build not only on the latest knowledge on climate change, NBS, and land policy, of which the members of the consortium have key expertise, but LNAD4CLIMATE engages with the knowledge and experience from the previous projects. These projects include, among others, the Cost Action LAND4FLOOD, Horizon2020 projects Operandum, I-Change and Sim4Nexus, Espon Titan, and the CLEVER Cities project.
