On April 4-5 Henk Nieboer participated in the Think Nature Forum in Paris. The forum was organized to have a lively debate among multidisciplinary participants on the current knowledge, facts and ongoing research on Nature Based Solutions (NbS); related mainly to the questions: ‘How can NbS offer opportunities for climate change adaptation and mitigation?’ and ‘How can NbS be applied to achieve integrated risk management and resilience?’
The forum format was designed to promote the dialogue among the participants, including inspirational key inputs by lead experts and parallel interactive working sessions. The discussions were oriented towards enriching the documented knowledge concerning:
• Identification of integrated holistic cross-sectoral NbS for enhanced risk management;
• Combination of NbS, multiplying their benefits, reducing threats and offering resilience;
• Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation by Nature: urban ecology, urban quality and well-being;
• Integration of NbS into local and regional spatial planning and decision-making;
• Performance monitoring and impact assessment of the deployed NbS;
• Involvement of NbS’ stakeholders in funding and implementation;
• Enhancement of NbS’ cost-effectiveness.
Henk Nieboer presented EcoShape’s Building with Nature Indonesia project in the session ‘Combining NBS as an integrated approach for risk management and resilience’. The presentation was well received.
Henk Nieboer says about the conference: ‘It was interesting to spend two days with professionals working in the field of NBS. The conference focused very much on urban situations. This is interesting, however not a topic EcoShape currently focuses on in particular. What is clear however is that the drive for NBS (or Building with Nature) is now very much a broad drive in the research and policy world in Europe. There is much going on which can be of advantage to EcoShape in the last 1,5 year of our BwN programme e.g. the inventory of the evidence base, of procurement and finance mechanisms for NBS solutions. We will look for opportunities to connect to these developments led by others’
