Impact on Cities:
The Connecting Nature framework to guide cities in the planning, delivery and stewardship of NBS has led to national awards, leveraged new funding for NBS and introduced cities to many other international support networks. For example, the Urban Gardens network developed by A Coruña has received a national award for excellence in NBS. Nicosia secured €8m in funding for their NBS exemplar, with Ioannina securing €10m for scaling up of NBS in their city. Glasgow has leveraged their NBS knowledge to partner with the University of Glasgow in securing £10 million from UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for the GALLANT project furthering NBS knowledge. 5 Connecting Nature cities were selected to participate in the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030. The Mayors of 3 Connecting Nature cities are signatories of the Green City Accord and 3 cities are signatories of CitiesWithNature.
Innovation Impact:
Sustaining and scaling project innovations beyond the project lifetime was a key driver from the outset. Key innovations include:
· UrbanByNature (2019): a capacity-building programme promoting exchange among cities, researchers, SMEs and NGOs to build bridges with NBS communities across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and other interested regions.
· Connecting Nature Enterprise Platform (2020): the world’s largest community of nature-based enterprises (NBE). Led by industry practitioners it aims to raise awareness and best practice among NBEs.
· EM|Path (2021) uses a range of people-centred co-production and engagement techniques to support sustainable community development and environmental protection
· Connecting Ecology (2022) specialised in biodiversity surveys, NBS impact evaluation and technical solutions innovation.
· Co-Impact (2022): an online open-source app which helps to create a Nature-Based Solutions project evaluation and monitoring plan.
Connecting Nature guidebooks have been translated by partners into multiple languages and key innovations have secured funding from other sources for further development. Partner knowledge and project innovations are being leveraged in multiple Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects (Invest4Nature, NBS Eduworld, Naturance, MAIA…) and also to the LIFE project ARTISAN and the Erasmus+ project UForest.
Contribution to Research, Policy and Practice:
- Research: 20 peer reviewed journal articles and 5 book/report chapters published with 23 papers underway. 7 PhDs and 4 postdoctoral researchers funded or part-funded .
- Policy: Internationally, UrbanByNature is being hosted by CitiesWithNature with its 215+ signatory cities (officially recognised city registry by SCBD).Brazilian Catalogue for NBS to be published in 2022. In Europe, lead authors on two pivotal EC Expert Publications contributing significantly to the global knowledge base on NBS impact and NBS in nature positive economy.
- Practice: Embedding of project outcomes into RTPI accreditation of planning courses across the UK and Ireland. Project outputs featured as best practice in the UK Green Building Council online directory. In Ireland, project outcomes to be delivered through Continuous Professional Development (CPD) training for landscape architects and public officers. In Poland and Spain, cities collaborating with industry and training bodies to deliver professional NBS training.
