Cities across Europe are facing issues such as flooding, drought and heat stress that will become increasingly challenging with climate change. High quality green spaces and waterbodies are innovative solutions that enhance cities’ resilience to these challenges, and help biodiversity to flourish. Making nature part of the urban living environment also improves quality of life for all citizens and enables business to prosper. However, there are still many barriers to the development and implementation of city strategies for nature based solutions. The GrowGreen project is designed to help overcome these barriers and implement nature based solutions in cities, to create harmony between people, the economy and the environment.

GrowGreen has three main objectives:

1. Contribute to the evidence base of nature based solutions in cities as cost-effective, replicable means of increasing urban climate and water resilience, as well as of their environmental, social and economic benefits. This knowledge base will underpin the development of policies and the global market for nature based solutions.

2. Develop an easy-to-use replicable approach to support the development and implementation of nature based solutions strategies in cities, aligned with the cities’ existing priorities.

3. Support the creation of the required conditions to drive and enable the implementation of city strategies for nature based solutions by raising awareness and capacity building in cities around the world. This will help support the development of the required policy framework, business models for investment, and the global market for nature based solutions.

To meet these objectives, the project fosters continuous exchange between the Frontrunner and Follower cities. Stakeholders and citizens in each case study city will also be engaged to contribute to their local nature based solutions demonstration projects or city strategies.

More information on the project is in the project brochure.

More information on how the project is designed to meet these objectives can be found in the work packages section of the website.