GrowGreen aims to create Nature-based Solutions in cities for climate and water resilience, sustainable economic growth, and healthy citizens and environments. As the final project year commences, a number of demonstration projects are completed and ready to showcase lessons learnt from their interactions with citizens.

Citizens are key actors in the development and implementation of Nature-based Solutions. The contribution from citizens, their ideas, active engagement, and stewardship make a difference in achieving positive impactful results for liveable and resilient cities.

Carrying out successful citizen engagement processes are some of the main ambitions of the GrowGreen project. Engaging citizens requires not only informing them about the importance of NBS for improving their quality of life but also generating enthusiasm and involvement to benefit from their ideas in the transformation process and in their future management.

The IUCN European Regional Office with contributions from the GrowGreen partners: Manchester, Wroclaw, Valencia, and Paisaje Transversal has developed the ‘GrowGreen report: Engaging citizens in nature-based solutions’. This report compiles the lessons learnt from the GrowGreen project as well as experiences from other cities in Europe and around the world to provide support to cities for implementing effective citizen engagement for NBS. The report focuses on two important areas for engagement:

• Engaging Citizens around local NBS projects
• Engaging citizens in the development and implementation of a city-wide strategy for NBS.

Engaging with citizens on the benefits of NBS generates enthusiasm and involvement, equally, the projects can benefit from local knowledge about the ‘best fit’ of NBS, and ideas about future management practices and maintenance adapted to the needs of citizens.

For the full GrowGreen report:  Engaging citizens in Nature‐based solutions click here.

The Citizen engagement for Nature-based Solutions: Fact Sheet can be found here.