This is the question that NetworkNature’s new policy note answers. Informed by expert discussions and inputs from EU-funded projects (ARCADIA, MERLIN, PONDERFUL, Spongescapes, SpongeWorks, Naturvation and NATURANCE), the note explores priority pathways for mainstreaming NbS in national and regional climate adaptation planning in the EU.
[MAIN TEXT] The publication of the 2024 EU Climate Risk Assessment, a first-of-its-kind report, revealed to EU citizens and policy makers that the EU’s vital systems are currently not prepared to meet the 36 assessed climate risks. Without appropriate and urgent responses, these risks will likely compromise EU’s food and water security, ecosystem services provision, energy security, financial stability, and the health of the general population.
Taking stock of these gaps in resilience policy and planning, the EU will soon release a new integrated framework for European climate resilience and risk management. The framework will be composed of both legislative and non-legislative measures to help Member States face the growing impacts of climate change. Many national climate adaptation strategies, as required by the 2021 Climate Adaptation Strategy and the EU Climate Law, already prioritise nature-based solutions in broad terms. The proposed new legal framework will establish the principle of climate resilience by design, to be mainstreamed across all policies, institutions, and sectors, as announced by the European Union Preparedness Strategy. It will provide decision-support tools based on Copernicus data to help stakeholders identify climate impacts in their regions or sectors and improve access to support mechanisms for local authorities.
The Commission’s recent assessment of EU and Member States adaptation investment needsidentified the largest investment need categories as infrastructure vulnerability - a critical concern across Europe due to slow-onset events like sea-level rise, and extreme weather such as storms and heatwaves, flooding, and droughts – and widespread threats to ecosystems, particularly due to extreme weather events, habitat degradation, and changing climatic conditions, all of which disrupt ecosystems and threaten species diversity. Infrastructure protection and ecosystem restoration are areas that can be addressed effectively by nature-based solutions.
There is a very strong evidence base supporting the idea that NbS at the landscape scale are powerful solutions to build climate resilience. The upcoming policy package is a key opportunity to embed NbS as a key tool for EU’s preparedness even more strongly. The public consultation on the proposal showed strong support for the policy requiring nature-based solutions as the default first line of defence.
Preparedness to climate risks is inherently complex, because risks are shared across sectors and require coordinated action. Regional authorities urgently need greater policy coherence, capacity building and inclusive governance mechanisms that enable practitioners and other stakeholders to regionally implement policy frameworks. NetworkNature details pathways for how this could be done, and showcases tools, developed by EU-funded projects, to guide regional policy makers.
Key messages in the NetworkNature policy note:
- Governance and capacity for designing and financing climate adaptation are critical enablers: regions need support, champions, cross-ministerial coordination, and practical tools.
- Improve access to, and allocation of EU funding for NbS. Adequate, accessible, and sufficient private and public funding is crucial to achieving landscape scale NbS that address climate adaptation and resilience.
- Monitoring, tracking and accountability is crucial but challenging as many NbS projects lack sustained, high-quality data, and short-term funding limits long term monitoring. EU co-funded NbS projects should be required to include baseline assessments and long-term monitoring plans of at least ten years.
Further information
The policy note is available here.
