The natural environment worldwide is increasingly affected by climate change, including disruption of vegetative growth cycle and rainfall, changes in species range or loss of species and natural habitats, desertification, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and coral bleaching. According to recent scientific studies, one species out of four is at risk of extinction by 2050 due to climate change.

This report has been prepared as part of an effort by IUCN to define its position on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and plan for future work to advance this concept and support effective implementation of NbS to enhance ecosystem services provision and address societal challenges. The report proposes a definitional framework for NbS, including a set of general principles for any NbS intervention. The report also defines the scope of NbS as an umbrella concept embracing a number of different ecosystem-based approaches.

The report – and a series of accompanying case studies – offers practical and proven approaches for environmental management and eco-engineering in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, that can, in large, be tailored for different situations. This is important if the benefits of what this report highlights are to become shared and used more extensively.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that poses risks to sectors across society and the economy. Nature-based approaches can offer sustainable solutions to cope with climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges. The brochure "Nature-based approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation", developed by Ecologic Institute on behalf of the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), introduces the opportunities, challenges, and success factors of nature-based solutions and presents good practice examples.

Nature-based solutions simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits by bringing more nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes. The Horizon 2020 Expert Group on ‘Nature-Based Solutions and Re-Naturing Cities’, chaired by Dr. Wilhelm Krull, Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation, was established under the 2014 Work Programme for the Societal Challenge “Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials”. Dr.

Nature ‐ Based Solutions (NBS) are solutions to societal challenges that are inspired and supported by nature. The European Commission requested the EKLIPSE project to help building up an evidence and knowledge base on the benefits and challenges of applying NBS.

Urban development leads to changes of surface cover that disrupt the hydrological cycle in cities. In particular, impermeable surfaces and the removal of vegetation reduce the ability to intercept, store and infiltrate rainwater. Consequently, the volume of stormwater runoff and the risk of local flooding rises. This is further amplified by the anticipated effects of climate change leading to an increased frequency and intensity of heavy rain events. Hence, urban adaptation strategies are required to mitigate those impacts.

Nature-based solutions, such as living shorelines, have the potential to restore critical ecosystems, enhance coastal sustainability, and increase resilience to natural disasters; however, their efficacy during storm events compared to traditional hardened shorelines is largely untested. This is a major impediment to their implementation and promotion to policy-makers and homeowners.

Nature is presented as a new paradigm for ergonomics. As a discipline concerned with well-being, the importance of natural environments for wellness should be part of ergonomics knowledge and practice. This position is supported by providing a concise summary of the evidence of the value of the natural environment to well-being. Further, an emerging body of research has found relationships between well-being and a connection to nature, a concept that reveals the integrative character of human experience which can inform wider practice and epistemology in ergonomics.

A contingent valuation approach is used to estimate how households value different multipurpose infrastructures (conventional or green) for managing flood risk and water pollution. As a case study we consider the Gorla Maggiore water park located in the Lombardy Region, in Northern Italy. The park is a neo-ecosystem including an infrastructure to treat waste water and store excess rain water, built in 2011 on the shore of the Olona River in an area previously used for poplar plantation. This park is the first one of this type built in Italy.