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CORDIS

Resilient Investment for Sustainable Environments

Project description

When nature needs investors

As flooding worsens across Europe, many point to nature-based solutions as the answer. The challenge is that such solutions rarely receive the funding they need. A lack of resources means they take a long time to show results, and their benefits are hard to record. These projects do not fit the usual models investors use. The EU-funded RISE-IN project aims to design a new approach that combines nature with engineering and bankability to get faster, measurable, resilient funding opportunities. Working directly with local communities in Italy, New Zealand and Portugal, the project is testing new bankability models. The overall goal is to demonstrate that green resilience can be a solid investment.

Objective

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are considered essential to solving the climate crisis. They have the potential to simultaneously address climate change, biodiversity loss and human wellbeing and development, by providing different ecosystem services. However, the typically small size of NBS projects, the difficulties to measure and monetize their co-benefits as well as the long time frame for investment returns and the risk profile, undermine their attractiveness for funding. In comparison to NBS alone, the combination of NBS and ecosystem-based approaches, physical measures and technological measures is able to provide measurable outcomes quicker, reducing the risk profile and facilitating faster implementation and long-time maintenance, broadening opportunities for ecosystem innovation and increasing investment attractiveness.
Aiming for bankability-by-design, RISE-IN will assess a set of climate resilient solutions (CRS), including NBS and ecosystem- based approaches and physical measures, by mapping and quantifying their co-benefits and identifying innovative financing and investment opportunities accordingly. Co-creation and participatory processes with local stakeholders, including investors and businesses, will enable the screening of the most adequate solutions for each site, in terms of functionality and funding and within a framework of just resilience. The assessment will be complemented by 3 climate risk assessment models that will reduce uncertainty regarding risks associated with extreme events, water run-off and capital loss. RISE-IN will demonstrate this concept for flood management (most costly type of disaster in Europe) in Cesena (IT), Christchurch (NZ) and Póvoa de Varzim (PT). RISE-IN demonstrations will be further tailored for replication in Ghent (BE), Zhytomyr (UA), Kadikoy (TR) and in 3 additional sites of Demonstrator Cities (Demo Cities) to prove the impact of the concept to facilitate bankability and upscale implementation across EU and Internationally.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MISS-2024-CLIMA-01

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Coordinator

POLITECNICO DI MILANO
Net EU contribution
€ 1 062 190,00
Address
PIAZZA LEONARDO DA VINCI 32
20133 Milano
Italy
Region
Nord-Ovest Lombardia Milano
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 1 062 190,00

Participants (26)

Partners (1)