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.
Highlights
Since thousands of years, river landscapes across the world have been transformed by humans to increase their function as drainage, to enhance navigation, to produce energy, and to enable agricultural production and settlement in former floodplain areas (Brown et al 2009, 2018; Posthumus et al 2010)
Efforts to increase acceptance should focus on providing and promoting awareness of benefits. The contributions to this Special Issue reflect the emergence of increasing research regarding the effects, planning, and governance of Nature-based solutions (NBS)
The Special Issue has shown the broad spectrum of NBS interventions that can help address societal challenges in the case of river landscapes and shed light on approaches for assessing their effects, for integrated planning at local to regional scales, and for initiating governance schemes for successful realization in practice
Summary
River landscapes across the world have been transformed by humans to increase their function as drainage, to enhance navigation, to produce energy, and to enable agricultural production and settlement in former floodplain areas (Brown et al 2009, 2018; Posthumus et al 2010). Changes in the river and flood regime as a result of climate change lead to further challenges (IPCC 2014; Pletterbauer et al 2018), which entail considerable economic costs (Schafer and Kowatsch 2015) and make it more difficult to sustain people’s quality of life (Vorosmarty et al 2010; Kibria 2016) In response to this unsustainable development, policy and decision makers have drawn up ambitious restoration programs to stop ecological degradation and to advance river landscape restoration. Examples are needed that show how to integrate scientific, indigenous, and local knowledge to attune NBS to local contexts and enhance the likelihood of successful implementation (Hemmerling et al 2020) This Special Issue aims to bring together insights and experiences from studies of assessing, planning, and implementing NBS in river landscapes in Europe and beyond.
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