Nature-based solutions are interventions designed to use the properties of nature to address multiple sustainability challenges. As they are increasingly used across cities and their surrounding rural and coastal areas, our landscapes are changing.
The focus of the NATURESCAPES project is nature-based solutions from a landscape perspective. We are exploring how this is happening and adding up on the ground, and what it means for nature and society.
Can we work with multiple nature-based solutions to create outcomes that address long-standing socio-economic challenges, enhance biodiversity and respond to climate change? Or do we face trade-offs between different places, people and outcomes?
Working in a transdisciplinary consortium involving universities, consultants and NGOs, we hope to identify how new kinds of NATURESCAPES can generate transformative change for the future.
We will work with NATURESCAPES in diverse social, cultural, economic and geographical settings across 30 functional urban areas (FUAs) with a specific focus on 12 case studies in the European Union, Latin America and the United States of America.
Using the FUAs concept, which includes urban areas as well as surrounding rural and coastal areas, we will explore and analyse the interaction between natural assets and nature-based solutions within and between diverse rural, coastal, and urban landscapes.
For the 30 FUAs we will investigate the contribution that natural assets and nature-based solutions make to climate, biodiversity and communities, how these benefits are distributed socially and spatially, and the governance conditions associated with different impacts.
