Involving communities in nature-based solutions to tackle urban climate and environmental challenges leads to innovation and multiple benefits, a study shows.
Participation of citizens in NBS projects leads to innovation in design and quality, as well as people gaining greater benefits from green and blue spaces (for access, recreation and health and wellbeing), researchers found. The study showed that involving communities.
Projects are also more likely to be successful in supporting nature renewal when they involve policymakers from across different sectors, rather than being carried out in silos, and when they align with government policy and strategy.
Researchers carried out interviews and workshops in three European cities – Paris Region, France, Velika Gorica, Croatia, and Aarhus, Denmark as part of the EU Horizon 2020-funded REGREEN project .
They found the size and complexity of the urban area and the ways the cities were governed had an impact on the outcome of the NBS.
In all areas the increased prevalence and severity of climate change effects (e.g. flooding, heat effects) and witnessing initiatives from other countries were drivers of NBS innovation.
Also influential were shifts in public and media perception around climate change, a tradition of use of public spaces by citizens and support from politicians and political leaders.
However, the research found that encouraging participation by residents and others, and experimentation may not necessarily lead to desired outcomes where there are also strong external (top-down) policy drivers (e.g. housing development pressures).
The study, by Carolyn Petersen , Duncan Russel and Nick Kirsop-Taylor from the University of Exeter, and Anne Jensen and Anders Branth Pedersen , from Aarhus University, is published in the journal Discover Cities.
Dr Petersen said: "When NBS projects aligned with and were integrated into government strategy with support from local leaders, this helped promote innovation in all three cities, as did involving local people in the co-design of NBS initiatives.
"We also found key differences. In the Paris Region there was more evidence of citizens and local NGOs developing their own NBS initiatives, based on tackling external factors and priorities such as increasing the liveability of urban areas, biodiversity, health and wellbeing, and climate adaptation, without government assistance, at least initially. Whereas, in Velika Gorica the barriers to local groups doing this, such as funding, were reported to be greater.
"Key differences that led to differing NBS outcomes included the size and complexity of urban areas, the effectiveness of enforcement of planning regulations, and the extent to which the governing architecture enabled citizens and local NGOs to develop their own NBS initiatives.
"The analysis indicates that where citizen participation and consultation were built into NBS projects, this brought both innovation in terms of the design, quality, biodiversity and or multi-functionality of green/blue spaces—whether this was greening of schoolyards, redesign of under-used green spaces or river restoration."
