UTILIZATION OF PRIVATE LAND FOR MAINSTREAMING NATURE-BASED SOLUTION IN THE SYSTEMIC TRANSFORMATION TOWARDS A CLIMATE-RESILIENT EUROPE

LAND4CLIMATE aims to increase the resilience of landscapes and urban settlements in the continental biogeographical area and beyond by nudging the implementation of nature-based solutions (NBS), which are at large-scale still in its infancy. However, there are three reasons for the tardy uptake of NBS in practice: (1) NBS need more land than grey infrastructure; (2) approaches to NBS hitherto often focus on public land; (3) private land, however, bears huge potential for climate resilience, both as a supplier (in terms of ecosystem service provision) and a recipient of benefits of NBS (in terms of climate risk reduction). LAND4CLIMATE addresses these implementation gaps.

Climate resilience needs land! LAND4CLIMATE aims to get access to private land for the implementation of NBS, not by buying land, but through the development of innovative governance schemes and business models, such as land readjustments schemes, strategic land leases and easements. The main objective of LAND4CLIMATE is to co-design and validate NBS on private land through implementation and upscaling with innovative strategies of land policy for a transformative climate-resilient future in areas with multiple risks, especially coupled extreme hydro-meteorological events such as floods, droughts and urban heat.

LAND4CLIMATE will operationalize this objective in six frontrunner cases in Austria, Czechia, Germany, Italy, Romania and Slovakia by:

• Identifying cause and effect relations of climate risks and NBS to allocate NBS effectively and efficiently

• Developing governance and business models to implement legitimate and just strategies of land policy for NBS on private land

• Enabling successful replication and upscaling

By involving seven replicant regions in the aforementioned countries, LAND4CLIMATE becomes able to replicate, foster and inspire new synergies between NBS beneficiaries and landowners on a wider scale and contribute to the EU’s mission for adaptation to climate change.