Roadmap for Citizen Action on Nature-based Solutions

This roadmap provides an evidence-based framework to support the uptake and mainstreaming of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) by recognising and strengthening existing citizen action for nature. It outlines practical pathways to move from fragmented, often unrecognised local practices toward integrated, sustained, and systemic implementation across governance, policy, and communities. Citizen action for nature already exists. Communities around the world are already engaging in practices that protect, restore, and sustain ecosystems. Yet, these efforts are rarely recognised as NbS. People speak of “restoration,” “green space,” “food sovereignty,” and “neighbourhood care”—not “NbS.” The term “NbS” itself is often perceived as abstract, technocratic, and disconnected from the everyday language of communities. 

Civil society organisations and citizens are essential actors in bringing NbS to life at the local level. This report examines what enables — and what prevents — them from doing so effectively.

The primary challenge lies not in citizen motivation, but in the absence of enabling conditions: accessible communication, inclusive governance, and sustained institutional and financial support. Structural barriers—including limited access to long-term funding (cited by 63% of survey respondents), insufficient communication tools (56%), and weak connections with local authorities (52%)—prevent grassroots action from being scaled, recognised, or maintained.

“If you translate nature-based solutions to the Dutch… it evaporates, it’s a hollow term. We have to think more about a regenerative ecosystem in which we see mankind as part of nature… solutions based on mutual well-being.”

— Interviewee 2, Landscape Designer, Netherlands

“There is ecological knowledge and people who care in every single neighbourhood in the city. It’s recognising the already existing civic capacity rather than starting from scratch every time.”

— Interviewee 9, Research Social Scientist, USA

Authored by: Claudia Misteli, María Angélica Mejía

The Nature of Cities Europe