NATURETHON | From global to glocal: financing NbS for climate action and urban adaptation
The webinar, co-organised by NATURANCE and Invest4Nature projects, has been the final event of the first Naturethon initiative. It discussed financing frameworks with an impact, drawing special attention to cities and the social value of nature-inspired solutions for adaptation in the urban environment.
Silvia Ainio, a climate policy expert specializing in international climate negotiations and sustainable finance, provided a global overview of the main challenges in financing nature-based solutions, particularly related to scaling up the role of the private sector, and illustrated a few innovative examples on how could these be overcome.
Following, Marianne Zandersen, professor in environmental economics at Aarhus University, Denmark, talked about social and economic benefits and values from NbS at the urban scale, focusing on well-being and health values. She showed an example of a mixed method approach that considers the multiple values that we might assign to NbS on the benefits, importance and usefulness of NbS.
The webinar is part of Naturethon, citizen engagement initiative designed to tap into the collective understanding of NbS deployment. The call for nature-inspired ideas will close on September 30, 2024. The final survey is now open!
Speakers
Silvia Ainio is a climate policy expert specializing in international climate negotiations and sustainable finance. She currently serves as the Lead Climate Finance Expert for the Italian Ministry of Finance under the G7 Presidency, where she works to advance climate finance initiatives. In the past, Ainio worked on sustainable finance and climate change policymaking for the European Commission and other international organizations, specializing on designing innovative instruments to scale up sustainable finance in developing countries. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) of Sciences Po, teaching a course on climate change negotiations, as well as a European Climate Pact Ambassador.
Marianne Zandersen is an environmental economist and professor at Aarhus University, Department of Environmental Science in Denmark, focusing on environmental and behavioral economics in the fields of urban and peri-urban systems, nature-based solutions, climate change and ecosystem management. She coordinated the REGREEN project on fostering green and healthy urban transitions in Europe and China and now leads work in the Invest4Nature project on the economic evidence of benefits of Nature-based Solutions and in the GoNaturePositive! project on evidence supporting systemic change towards a nature positive economy.
About the projects
NATURANCE is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme. It will examine technical, financial and operational feasibility and performance of solutions that are built upon and combine disaster risk financing & investments with nature-based solutions.
Invest4Nature is an EU-funded project that aims to develop a better understanding of the multiple benefits and financial performance of Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Drawing insight from existing cases in 5 NbS Living Labs, the project prepares the grounds for investments needed for the broad implementation and market creation of NbS.