Communities around the world are exploring how ‘nature-based solutions’ (NBS), or solutions inspired by nature can provide people with social and economic benefits. Communities, organisations and regions with experience in this field are invited to work with ICLEI to set themselves up as an ‘NBS hub’ – in other words, a network centred on a geographic region or country, composed of individuals, organisations and government entities working on nature-based solutions.
Once in action, these NBS hubs will collaborate with each other and with external stakeholders to gather and transfer knowledge on nature-based solutions. Hub activities can focus on a specific sector, on mainstreaming NBS policies, on awareness-raising, on developing partnerships in support of NBS, and/or on the actual implementation of the nature-based solutions. These activities can take place in varied surroundings (urban and rural), and should involve stakeholders from different disciplines and backgrounds.
These hubs will formalise collaborative work between organisations and networks at the local, regional and national levels. Collaboration amongst hub participants will build capacity, foster knowledge exchange, and develop new partnerships. Furthermore, there will be opportunities to connect hubs’ work with other, similar initiatives in Europe.
The regional hubs will be established and supported by the NetworkNature project, which ICLEI supports. NetworkNature gathers resources, projects, best practises, and tools under one roof in order to maximise the impact and spread of nature-based solutions and is committed to providing support in setting up hubs, promotion of hub activities, bi-annual webinars, and access to state-of-the-art knowledge and networks. In other words, the hubs will provide invaluable opportunities to expand nature-based solutions work!
If this sounds of interest, take the first steps in developing a NetworkNature nature-based solution hub. To express your interest and with any questions, contact anna.bruen@iclei.org by 15 February 2022.