Strengthening high-integrity Nature-based Solutions for drought resilience
As drought risks intensify across Europe, ensuring the quality and effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is more important than ever. A recent UrbanbyNature webinar organised by NBS4Drought, together with IUCN and ICLEI Europe, explored how the IUCN Global Standard for NbS can support more robust, inclusive and scalable solutions in practice.
Opening the session, Boris Erg (IUCN Europe) and Matthew Bach (ICLEI Europe) highlighted the rapid growth of NbS and the need to ensure their long-term impact through rigorous frameworks and collaboration across governance levels.
Natalia Burgos (IUCN) introduced the NbS Standard as a key tool to guide the design, implementation and monitoring of high-integrity solutions. She emphasised that while NbS bring together a broad community of actors, their success depends on clear criteria, transparency and awareness of trade-offs, particularly in complex contexts such as water scarcity. Finally, she introduced the IUCN European NbS Hub a connecting and enabling platform to support NbS mainstreaming across policy and practice in the region.
Facundo Odriozola (IUCN) focused on how the IUCN Global Standard can be applied in practice through the NbS Self-Assessment Tool. He showed how the tool enables practitioners to assess projects against the eight NbS criteria, identify strengths and gaps, and improve design, implementation and monitoring. Drawing on global case studies, he illustrated how the Standard supports more transparent, evidence-based and scalable NbS, while helping integrate them into policy frameworks and long-term governance.
From a European perspective, Daniela Rizzi (ICLEI Europe) pointed to a growing but fragmented NbS landscape, underlining the importance of platforms like UrbanByNature and NetworkNature in supporting knowledge exchange and capacity building.
A strong focus of the session was on practical implementation. NBS4Drought team member Diana Vigah Adetsu (Aarhus University) shared insights from drought-affected contexts, highlighting wetlands and irrigation approaches as promising NbS. She stressed that early and continuous stakeholder engagement, especially with farmers, is essential to ensure acceptance, legitimacy and long-term stewardship.
Further examples included the Italian NbS Hub, presented by Gregorio Sgrigna (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), who emphasised the importance of national communities, capacity building and sustainable financing, and lessons from Danube restoration shared by Silke Michelitsch (BOKU), including the use of NbS self-assessment tools.
Discussions also addressed key challenges, from governance complexity to social risks such as green gentrification. While difficult to fully avoid, speakers agreed that applying the NbS Standard can support more inclusive and transparent decision-making.
The webinar concluded with a clear message: tackling drought through NbS requires not only working with nature, but across sectors, stakeholders and scales, supported by strong standards and shared learning.
The recording of the webinar is available below.
