Nature-based solutions in urban and peri-urban areas: a state of the art

Nature-based solutions in urban and peri-urban areas: a state of the art

Conveners: Conveners: Carla S.S. Ferreira, Zahra Kalantari, Rares Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir, Jannes Stolte

Urbanization and climate changes have direct impacts on ecosystems and the services they provide to society, thus influencing human well-being and health. Urban and peri-urban areas face enormous challenges, such as mitigating land degradation, enhancing resilience to natural disasters and adapting to climate change. To achieve long-term sustainable solutions in urban and peri-urban areas, we need to understand and plan for the feedback mechanisms between population expansion and associated land-use changes and their impacts on ecosystem services. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been seen as sustainable actions to tackle some of these pressing challenges. The potential of NBS to mitigate these challenges in urban development under climate change needs to be considered and accounted for in spatial planning and management strategies. Increasing research has been performed to assess the role of NBS on enhancing sustainable urbanisation, restoring degraded ecosystems, developing climate change adaptation and mitigation, and improving risk management and resilience. In addition, NBS has received increasing attention on the political agenda. This session aims to provide an overview of the research and practical implementation of NBS in urban and peri-urban areas, particularly on the design and constructions aspects, monitoring of functioning and evidence of the impact from existing NBS, and cost-effectiveness analyses. We welcome contributions focusing on studies performed at distinct scales (e.g. green roofs and municipal projects). The session also seeks for presentations about the integration of NBS with other engineering solutions for sustainable urban development, hazard and climate change mitigation.