Emphasis of NbS in City Building Regulations
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Non-public funds are essential to help scale the number of NbS projects across European cities. However, we have found that many of the financial models for raising private funds for NbS projects can be challenging to practically implement for some cities.
JUSTNature provides an opportunity to gain practical insights from cities implementing different types of urban-based NbS. Following a comprehensive analysis of various private funding mechanisms (including carbon bonds, carbon credits, tax incentives, etc.) it was found that many of these are either not suitable for particular cities and their existing legislative systems and/or the level of support from some of the suggested non-public financial models was not expected to be sufficient to implement and maintain future NbS interventions.
The core issue was that investment in city-scale NbS is difficult to secure as there is a need to clearly define the return on investment resulting from implementing NbS. This is challenging as the value from NbS is often centred on the well-being of citizens and the impact is likely felt over a period of time that is greater than what many investors are comfortable with.
The most suitable mechanism for unlocking private funding / investment in NbS was found to be from policy drivers in city planning and permit regulations. In many cases, this approach is already used to ensure private entities contribute to NbS in cities. However, it was noted that a stronger emphasis should be placed on NbS in regulations and more control given to cities to influence the type of NbS implemented by companies looking to develop within city limits.
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003757.
