Water Projects Europe (WPE) on Nature-based solutions for ecological qualities in cities

Today, more than 55% of the world's population lives in cities, cities are home to 80% of global GDP and are responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions and 75% of natural resource consumption. However, if planned well and supported by an ambitious policy, cities can reduce humanity's environmental impact, as they can meet human needs more efficiently and find synergies between urban development and nature conservation. The EU-funded MULTISOURCE project aims to facilitate the systematic city-wide planning of Nature-based Solutions for urban water treatment, storage and reuse and will support decision-making with co-designed tools, contributing to the achievement of a Water-Smart Society.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly adopted as an effective tool to address urban challenges, as they provide a range of ecological, social, and economic benefits. But to what extent do current policy frameworks support or hinder their implementation? How the concept of NbS is addressed in selected EU and Member State policies and funding instruments? What are the financial challenges for the sustainability of NbS?

To address these issues and to improve cooperation between EU-funded projects, MULTISOURCE and Water Europe are co-organising a clustering event in the framework of the project clustering actions to share the results of different approaches while tackling the associated challenges and share knowledge and experience on urban NbS among projects dealing with the same objectives. Four EU funded NbS focused projects (MULTISOURCE, NICE, HYDROUSA, UNALAB, CONNECTING NATURE) are invited to discuss at WPE
The event is part of Water Project Europe (WPE) that is a series of events of Water Europe made to learn from and build on the experience of innovating projects working on converging topics. WPE aims at clustering water-related projects by thematic areas to allow them to interact, mutually build on the respective experience, support policy development and stimulate the market uptake of innovations.

This edition of WPE intends to:
› Foster collaboration and synergies between NbS EU-funded projects.
› Develop strategies for the market outreach of the projects’ outcomes.
› Extract and valorise components useful to policy building for NbS development