December 21, 2022 | News
Invest4nature – Promoting investments in NBS and accelerating market uptake by gaining a better understanding of the economic performance of NBS, considering climate mitigation and risk reduction
Invest4Nature is an EU-funded project promoting investments in nature-based solutions (NBS) by gaining a better understanding of their economic performance. This is done with respect to their potential in climate change risk reduction and mitigation.
Why Invest4Nature ?
The world is experiencing a severe climate and biodiversity crisis. The EU’s strategy to tackle this crisis – the Green Deal – considers nature-based solutions (NBS) as a key measure. NBS has a manifold of environmental, social and economic benefits: from mitigation and adaptation to climate change to an increased well-being for citizens. In cities, this might look like the reduction of urban heat island effects. Whereas in areas near bodies of water, this might mean flood mitigation.
Currently, most NBS are implemented with the strong support of public funding and little from the private sector. The lack of business and investment cases for NBS is in part due to the lack of systematic understanding of their full range of economic and societal benefits. This lack of information hinders the emergence of an NBS market.
For example, no standard methodology to calculate the economic and financial benefits of NBS, e.g. the reduction of climate risks, has been developed. Such a methodology is important for financial stakeholders like investors and insurances.
The overall aim of the project is to:
Outputs of Invest4Nature will include:
Stakeholder engagement is a key component of Invest4Nature and we emphasize the strong involvement of stakeholders in the co-production of project results. The outputs mentioned above will be developed in cooperation with the relevant local players including project developers, decision makers and funding and financing institutions.
The co-creation process will contribute to facing the challenges and barriers to adoption of the proposed NBS business models. Such barriers may look like poor adaptation to given socio-cultural situations, possible ecosystem disservices, absence of supportive governance and financial instruments to stimulate implementation, or low social acceptance lure to account for the true social value of the generated benefits.
The Invest4Nature consortium bring together the expertise of 15 organisations from 11 European countries. Our partners bring their expertise and experience in the field of NBS: from universities, research institutes, NGOs, SMEs and municipalities implementing NBS that act as our Living Labs.
Find out more!
Invest4Nature is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe call topic HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-05: The economics of nature-based solutions: cost-benefit analysis, market development and funding.
