Planning and governing nature-based solutions in river landscapes: Concepts, cases, and insights

authored by

Christian Albert, Jochen Hack, Stefan Schmidt, Barbara Schröter

Abstract

Nature-based solutions (NBS), understood as actions that use ecosystem processes to address societal needs, can play important roles to future-proof river landscape development for people and nature. However, knowledge gaps exist how NBS can be planned and implemented at landscape scales. This Special Issue brings together insights and experiences from studies of assessing, planning, and implementing NBS in river landscapes in Europe and beyond. It addresses three research fields: (i) NBS effects, looking at the effectiveness of NBS to achieve ecological, social, and/or economic outcomes, (ii) NBS planning, focusing on approaches for planning and designing NBS, and (iii) NBS governance, relating to governance and business models for implementation. The twelve contributions deliver evidence on how NBS outperform conventional, rather technical solutions, provide guidance and tools to operationalize the NBS concept into practice, and showcase successful governance models of NBS in different contexts. The editorial ends with an outlook on further research needs.

External Organisation(s)

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Technische Universität Darmstadt

Type

Article

Journal

Ambio

Volume

50

Pages

1405-1413

No. of pages

9

ISSN

0044-7447

Publication date

08.2021

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geography, Planning and Development, Ecology, Environmental Chemistry

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01569-z (Access: Open)