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The rapid assessment “Nature‐based Solutions in the Mediterranean Cities¨ was carried out between 2017‐ 2018, and was commissioned by IUCN‐Med in order to illustrate how the NbS concept is being adopted in Mediterranean cities. The report also aimed to explore how much support NbS are receiving from public policies and local communities, and to understand how their implementation helps practitioners and citizens to improve living conditions and urban biodiversity.
The report includes 50 concrete examples of NbS interventions in cities from 15 Mediterranean countries, covering societal challenges such as climate change, water management, coastal resilience, green space management, air quality, and urban regeneration.
“Nature based Solutions in the Mediterranean Cities¨ is intended as a preliminary survey of NBS interventions in the region. The main findings will be presented to the international and Mediterranean communities, and analysed so that further development of the concept can be promoted.
According to the results of this assessment, the integration of NbS in existing policy frameworks still faces some significant hurdles. Outside of the environmental community, the NbS concept remains confusing. Additionally, there is a clear need to scale up NbS from pilot phase to more broad application, in order to generate a robust set of results and impacts.
However, the main bottleneck preventing the implementation of NbS policy frameworks appears to be the absence of effective integrated urban policies in most countries of the Mediterranean region.
On the other hand, the success of many NbS interventions seems to be strongly connected with local community acceptance. In this sense, the mainstreaming of effective communications and participatory mechanisms is seen as a key mechanism for assuring citizen‐level ownership of NbS projects.
