Wednesday, June 5 • 11:00 - 12:30
The Nature of Cities Festival 2024, Berlin, Germany
NetworkNature isn’t just a knowledge sharing platform, it is a network of cities, professionals, practitioners and community members dedicated to implementing nature-based solutions (NbS) at the local level. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the NbS Hubs community. NetworkNature provides guidance and support to 11 NbS Hubs spanning Europe. These NbS Hubs serve as knowledge centres and support the implementation and understanding of NbS in their regions. They share information and bring people together to identify challenges, gather knowledge, map needs, and take active steps to implement NbS.
These types of ‘on the ground’ activities formed the basis of The Nature of Cities Festival session “Live tour of Nature-based Solutions around Europe”. Speakers showcased how each NbS Hub worked with and for nature in concrete projects. This tour across 10 countries gathered insights and learnings, provoked questions, and facilitated cross Hub connection and experience sharing.
Nine NbS Hubs representatives were present from the NetworkNature Hubs community, including the NetworkNature Nordic Hub, the Italy Hub, the Spanish Hub, the Caucasus Hub, the Ukrainian Hub, the Scottish Hub, the Polish Hub in Wroclaw, TeAM Hub Hungary, and the Southeastern Europe Hub.
NbS Hubs representatives and NetworkNature
Hubs presented posters outlining interventions such as community gardens, green roofs, rain gardens, urban parks, seminatural retention basins, urban forests, close-to-nature forestry management, among others. The posters were accompanied by short presentations and panel discussions focused on discussing the successes and challenges encountered during NbS implementation in their local contexts, especially the technical, administrative, and political aspects. Speakers emphasised the importance of sharing lessons learned from previous projects and incorporating citizen insights, instead of strictly following standard protocols.
Dagmara Rydzewska from the Polish NBS Hub presenting the NbS trail implemented in Wrocław (Poland).
Outcomes and key takeaways of the discussion:
-
Implementing NbS led to an increase in citizen’s awareness about their effectiveness in addressing societal challenges such as climate change adaptation and mitigation.
-
Visiting a NbS site illuminated its implementation, monitoring and maintenance processes.
-
the main challenges to NbS uptake and implementation are competition for space, siloed approaches, long-term maintenance of NbS, scepticism towards their effectiveness, lack of funding and disconnect between beneficiaries and payers represent.
For a successful implementation and upscaling of NbS, it is important to:
-
Engage and communicate early with local communities and stakeholders to increase their sense of ownership of the NbS interventions.
-
Increase people’s awareness about the benefits of NbS.
-
Share lessons learned from previous NbS projects.
-
Use understandable terminology around NbS in multi-lingual regions.
-
Incorporate citizen insights, instead of strictly following standard protocols.
-
Adopt a place-based approach to NbS to ensure it is tailored to the needs and characteristics of the local community.
-
Invest efforts into the maintenance of NbS interventions.
-
Implement community-led initiatives to address the most prominent challenge to NbS implementation which is their maintenance during project scaling up.
-
Fostering cooperation among stakeholders.
For more details on the learnings and conversation, see the report.
Find out more about the NbS Hubs and the NbS site visits posters.