Introduction

This Roadmap to 2030 identifies core action areas for European Research and Innovation (R&I) on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) that are essential to achieve EU goals for NbS development and deployment. It provides an overview of efforts implemented so far, major knowledge needs and knowledge implementation gaps, and helps lay out and facilitate synergies and complementarities between the past, ongoing, and forthcoming activities of European R&I on NbS. The overarching vision of the roadmap is for EU R&I to empower policy, practice, businesses, and citizens in mobilising the full potential of NbS in achieving a sustainable and just transformation of society, building on robust evidence and expertise.   

This visualisation will enable you to navigate through and within the roadmap; guiding you from the context in which it has been set, to the exploration of the diverse pathways where R&I can play a key role for NbS implementation and mainstreaming. 

To support the deployment of evidence-based NbS in Europe and globally, and achieve the vision depicted above, four strategic action areas were identified for transdisciplinary R&I: 

  1. Advancing NbS knowledge and data on NbS
  2. Closing the NbS research-implementation gap
  3. Mainstreaming NbS in policy
  4. Building awareness, capacities, and dialogues on NbS