Nature-based solutions (NBS) are actions that use natural processes in a resource efficient manner to solve societal challenges. The lack of supportive legislature, and financial, communication and social barriers complicate the process of NBS implementation. It is an urgent need to develop approaches to design and implement NBS that would act as drivers to overcome potential barriers and enhance the social acceptability of the project.

The European Dredging Association (EuDA) participated in a Horizon 2020 project sponsored by the European Union. The project named ThinkNature had as objective to promote the application of nature-based solutions (NBS). NBS have obvious advantages but have not been embraced at wider scale. In this article, the authors reflect as to why NBS are not mainstream solutions, why it is necessary to promote the concept and whether there are barriers that hinder wide-scale application. In this article the authors describe how relevant the topic is to the dredging community.

This article was published at the Project Repository Journal (Oct/ Nov 2019 – Volume 3, pages 56-59) [link]. The article summarizes all the achievements of the ThinkNature project with links on the exploitable results and the deliverables that can be found on the ThinkNature Platform.

This Handbook has been developed in the framework of the ThinkNature project. Its main objective is to gather and promote state-of-the-art knowledge regarding Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), comprising a comprehensive guide to all relevant actors. To this end, each aspect of NBS is investigated, from project development to financing and policy making, and is presented in a concise and comprehensive way, in order to be easily understandable. Regarding the EU agenda around NBS, this Handbook contributes to:

This document concerns the second presentation about "Using Co-creation to Stimulate Transition for Implementing NBS: Shared Governance, Spatial Challenges and Environmental Policies", presented by Israa Mahmoud during the fourth ThinkNature webinar at 5/6/2019 about "Governance Models for NBS: Policies, Strategies and Decision Making Mechanisms".

This document concerns the first presentation about "The Sustainable Land Use (SLU) and Nature Based Solution (NBS) Urban Agenda Partnership: Brief overview and focus on Action 6 on better regulation", presented by Claudia de Luca during the fourth ThinkNature webinar at 5/6/2019 about "Governance Models for NBS: Policies, Strategies and Decision Making Mechanisms".