<strong>Nature-based solutions and resilience as complementary strategies for urban governance and planning: A review of assessment methodologies</strong>

Abstract

Climate change is threatening cities all around the world and local governments are challenged to address climate extreme events that have a severe impact in human safety and well-being. Urban resilience and nature-based solutions are approaches based in ecological principles that are being introduced in urban climate governance and planning. The first one focuses on the ability of urban systems to recover, change, adapt and transform in response to stresses and strains, while the second one tries to increase the capacity of the urban system to provide ecosystem services related with climate change mitigation and adaptation. How do these two approaches address climate change? What connections and differences can be found? The aim of this paper is to answer these questions through a systematic review and meta-analysis of the scientific literature about methodologies to assess resilience to climate change and ecosystem services that contribute to mitigation and adaptation in urban areas. Our preliminary findings are: i) climate resilience mainly focuses on the capacity of the system to recover from climate related disasters while nature-based solutions include a broader spectrum of climate change impacts; ii) resilience assessments usually include infrastructure and social indicators but only a few introduce ecological aspects and; iii) mitigation and adaptation ecosystem services assessments rarely take into account social variables. We conclude that urban resilience and nature-based solutions offer complementary approaches to urban governance and planning and that governments can learn from both of them to reframe climate urban resilience strategies that better integrate the technological, ecological and social components of climate adaptation and mitigation.