What happens when a region is invited not only to analyse its problems, but to imagine what it could become?
That question was at the heart of the second NetworkNature Mission-Driven Investment Planning for Regeneration Bootcamp, held in Bari on 8–10 July 2026. Where the Milan pilot focused on turning scattered NbS ideas into bankable investment clusters, Bari was the first edition to run the full journey in one regional setting, across three integrated modules. Understanding moved participants from fragmented, sectoral views to a shared understanding of Apulia’s regional dynamics, its feedback loops and leverage points. Planning moved them from that understanding to a regenerative vision of what the region could become, a vision that then guides investment planning and turns into a portfolio of transformational investment ideas. Financing moved them from strategy to structured investment pipelines and portfolios, with clustered measures, business cases and funding and financing strategies.
Hosted by the University of Bari Aldo Moro (DISSPA) and convened by NetworkNature and ALTAMIRA Regenerative Finance together with the NbS Italy Hub and CNR-IRET, the bootcamp followed the Hub’s annual conference. It brought together researchers, engineers, architects, B Corps and entrepreneurs, environmental NGOs and municipal staff.
A global and European alliance for regenerative design of infrastructure systems
A highlight of this edition was our collaboration with the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In his keynote, AIA President Illya Azaroff FAIA argued that sustainability, which assumes a static balance, is no longer enough. Regenerative design must actively increase biocapacity, and it must start from the bioregion and the watershed before the site. With the AIA adopting regenerative design as a strategic minimum standard for its more than 100,000 members, architects are becoming powerful allies of the NbS community.
The collaboration continues beyond Bari. At the AIA’s first Regenerative Design Summit in Washington DC [date], we presented the bootcamp approach in the session on Finance, Investment & Value Creation, which examined the economic case for regenerative design and the financing mechanisms that can help scale its impact. In February 2027, together with with UPGE the French Professional Union of Ecological Engineering Companies, we will host a NetworkNature webinar on the skills needed to mainstream regenerative design and finance the transition, titled: Skills, Professions and Investment Readiness for a Regenerative, Nature-Positive Economy. Stay tuned!
The IUCN European NbS Hub led a hands-on session on the IUCN Global Standard for NbS and the Urban Nature Index. The European Commission (DG RTD) set out the EU policy and research landscape, and the European Investment Bank shared lessons from its Natural Capital Financing Facility. The Città Metropolitana di Milano and PAN Associati brought implementation experience from Milan’s Sponge City strategy and from Apulian projects. Bringing researchers, practitioners, citizens and the Commission around one table also offered the Commission a tangible case to test how its tools work on the ground.
Seeing NbS as critical infrastructure networks
The field tour to Bari Costasud, the Castellaneta Marina dunes and the Martina Franca peri-urban park proved essential. On the dunes, participants could see a coastal dune system for what it is: critical infrastructure that dissipates storm energy, stores sediment and protects the hinterland. Raised walkways showed that tourism and protection need not be a catch-22; design can find a way through.
The visits also made clear that natural infrastructure works as a network, not as isolated sites. This is a call to the NbS community: to design interventions as acupuncture points that restore connectivity across critical natural infrastructure networks, at the scale of the whole watershed and not only the city.
Visioning and Imagining before planning
The most distinctive element of Bari was testing how regenerative design principles can be combined with systems understanding through visioning. Participants were asked not just to reason about the future, but to place themselves in it, and then to translate that vision into plans for the territory.
We started with hopes and fears, and this simple exercise touched deep motivations. The loss of Apulia’s centuries-old olive trees to Xylella emerged not only as a loss of biodiversity, but as a wound to identity and cultural heritage. It became clear that leveraging identity, pride and heritage is crucial to move from good intentions to action.
Investment ideas were then tested against the eight principles of a regenerative economy, and a set of prompts helped participants rethink existing value chains in agriculture and tourism. Private-sector participants, including B Corps and entrepreneurs from northern Italy, brought regenerative value-creation models already working in practice. Strikingly, the two working groups started from different municipalities (Castellana Grotte and Molfetta) yet reached the same conclusion: Apulia’s renewal lies in combining regenerative agriculture, slow tourism and social justice.
The power of collective intelligence
Diversity again proved a strength. Discussing why citizens sometimes oppose NbS, an engineer from Italy’s railway group suggested looking at how people move through the city. Perhaps the opposition is not to nature itself, but to how interventions disrupt daily routes. A different lens unlocked new possibilities.
“I am taking home reflections and discoveries of enormous value to me, the starting point for the work I intend to develop in the coming months. I believe I have finally understood, all the way through, what Nature-based Solutions really are and what approach is needed to develop them effectively. It’s as if I had updated my ‘mental database’. A programme that seemed focused on the science of NbS led us to understand that activating citizens is just as decisive as the technical aspects: without community participation, awareness and involvement, Nature-based Solutions will struggle to take root everywhere.”
— Daniela Saltarin, Vice President, Plant-for-the-Planet Italia
Understanding quickly turned into action. Within days of the bootcamp, participants came forward with concrete proposals: bringing NbS into the school academies that Plant-for-the-Planet runs for children aged 9 to 12, offering to co-organise a future edition in Veneto alongside a summer camp where children explore nature while adults plan, and asking how their organisation could join the NbS Italy Hub network.
NbS as layer zero of the economic transition
Perhaps the deepest lesson is the need to zoom out. NbS are infrastructure layer zero, the most strategic layer, and allies in a broader economic transition. This echoes the findings EIB’s on water resilience: the task is to help people and sectors transition without getting locked into harmful practices. Many of these reconversion investments will include NbS, but the conversation must start with the outcomes we envision, aligning the interests of all stakeholders around these can help us visualize more concretetely the economy and the value chains we need to transition to, not the project.
Perhaps the deepest lesson is the need to zoom out. NbS are infrastructure layer zero, the most strategic layer, and allies in a broader economic transition. This echoes the findings of the Water Foresight roundtables on water resilience: the task is to help people and sectors transition without getting locked into harmful practices. Many of these reconversion investments will include NbS, but the conversation must start with the outcomes we envision, not with the project. Aligning the interests of all stakeholders around those outcomes helps us visualise more concretely the economy and the value chains we need to transition to and from there the investments that need to be made in the short and medium term to get there.
Honest reflections
Bari also showed us realities we must face. Despite outreach to more than 400 contacts, including 40 municipalities, only one municipality took part. In many smaller municipalities nature is not yet a political priority, and resources are thin. A transition of this scale cannot rely solely on local authorities’ ability to make bold choices. Understanding what would bring them to the table is a priority for the next editions.
What’s next? A call for NbS Hubs and host regions
The energy of Bari is already travelling: participants are exploring how to replicate the format in other regions, including Veneto. Bari and the Dortmund edition, hosted by TU Dortmund’s Chair of Landscape Planning in the Ruhr region, have shown how the methodology adapts from a Mediterranean region facing water scarcity and coastal pressure to a mature post-industrial landscape.
We are now looking for a convening partner for the fourth and final bootcamp of the series, to be held in January or February 2027. NbS Hubs are especially invited to apply. We also welcome regional agencies, municipalities, universities and other organisations that can bring a credible local challenge or investment opportunity to work on.
The bootcamp is a three-day, in-person working programme for 20–25 participants from the host territory. They include planners, infrastructure and procurement officials and financial directors from local and regional governments, as well as utilities, public asset owners, project developers, investors and private-sector actors. Participants work on real projects, not abstract cases, and leave with a portfolio of priority project clusters, conceptual business cases and an indicative procurement and financing roadmap. We particularly welcome partners who can engage non-capital cities and smaller municipalities, which are often under-represented in EU processes, a lesson Bari made very clear.
Hosting is a collaborative effort. We ask the convening partner to designate one or two focal points, co-design the agenda around local priorities, join the delivery team as co-facilitators, and help invite participants and identify the “problem owners” of the challenges to be addressed. The partner also provides a free venue and basic local logistics. No financial contribution is required: materials and catering are covered by NetworkNature. In return, host organisations gain accelerated capacity-building across departments, closer alignment between planning, finance and procurement, a stronger position to access European and national funding, and visibility across the NetworkNature community.
Interested? Write to natalia@altamira-regen.com by 20 November 2026 with one or two paragraphs on why your organisation would be an ideal host, how you would help reach participants, and a named focal point. No formal proposal is needed. We will hold short exploratory calls in late November and confirm the host by mid-December.
