Climate change impacts increase pressure on challenges to sustainability and the developmental needs of cities. Conventional, "hard" adaptation measures are often associated with high costs, inflexibility and conflicting interests related to the dense urban fabric, and ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) has emerged as a potentially cost-efficient, comprehensive, and multifunctional approach. This paper reviews and systematises research on urban EbA. We propose an analytical framework that draws on theory from ecosystem services, climate change adaptation and sustainability science.

Freshwater is a key resource and medium for various economic sectors and domestic purposes but its use is often at the expense of natural ecosystems. Water management must change to deal with urgent issues and protect aquatic ecosystems and their services, while addressing the demand for water from the competing claims for cities, agriculture, industry, energy and transport. In this paper key water challenges (shortage, pollution, aquatic ecosystems threatened) have been identified via global modelling.

Current concepts that aim to align economic development with sustainability, such as the circular and green economy, often consider natural systems as externalities. We extend the green economy concept by including the landscape as the provider of social, economic and environmental values. Our aim is to explore how companies could engage in creating landscape-inclusive solutions for sustainable landscapes. We propose a conceptual model of the relationship between companies and landscape services based on a demand for landscape benefits by companies, implications for wider society.

As the reality of a carbon-neutral market and future takes form, all available resources will need to be focused upon removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this regard, no alternative is more promising today than nature-based solutions. Restoration of native ecosystems and the use of management concepts such as adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing for ranchland have the potential to reliably store vast amounts of carbon in near-surface soil at very low cost.

Agroforestry, the integration of trees and shrubs with livestock and/or crops, can make a substantial contribution to mitigating and enabling adaptation to climate change. However, its full potential will only be achieved if the challenges to agroforestry implementation are identified and the most efficient and sustainable solutions are made widely known. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore these challenges and to determine the most suitable set of solutions for each challenge that combines local effectiveness with European scale relevance.

Greening roofs or walls to cool down city areas during summer, to capture storm water, to abate pollution, and to increase human well-being while enhancing biodiversity: nature-based solutions (NBS) refer to the sustainable management and use of nature for tackling societal challenges. Building on and complementing traditional biodiversity conservation and management strategies, NBS integrate science, policy, and practice and create biodiversity benefits in terms of diverse, well-managed ecosystems.

As deeply interlinked challenges to water, energy, and food security appear poised to accelerate in the coming decades, interest has grown in landscape-based approaches to manage water-energy-food (W-E-F) nexus risks and trade-offs. Both engineered and "natural infrastructure" approaches are needed to increase productivity and resilience in W-E-F systems and to meet pressures of a growing global population and changing climate.

Pollinators such as bees and hoverflies are essential components of an urban ecosystem, supporting and contributing to the biodiversity, functioning, resilience and visual amenity of green infrastructure. Their urban habitats also deliver health and well-being benefits to society, by providing important opportunities for accessing nature nearby to the homes of a growing majority of people living in towns and cities. However, many pollinator species are in decline, and the loss, degradation and fragmentation of natural habitats are some of the key drivers of this change.