Climate Mitigation through Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Poland: Harnessing knowledge and experiences for climate-resilient cities (Climate NBS Polska)

Project

The project hopes to increase awareness of NBS in Poland as a cost-effective urban climate mitigation and climate protection measure. It seeks to build capacity, knowledge and skills among city officials, municipal staff and landscape planners to enable the conceptual and technical design and implementation of NBS. Working with a partner project led by the Polish think-tank Sendzimir Foundation (SF), this project aims to achieve its goals by (i) creating a catalogue of urban NBS; (ii) offering guidance and policy recommendations to promote urban NBS; and by (iii) setting up a targeted capacity-building programme for the project’s end-users. It will include an online course, training events across Poland and a study visit to Germany. The project will also foster the development of a Polish network of NBS experts and work closely with a number of Polish cities, such as Poznan, Krakow, Wroclaw and Warsaw.

Background

Many Polish cities are undergoing intense development, which is placing investment pressure on undeveloped land. Individual sites would be able to deliver on urban climate change mitigation and reduce GHG emissions, with the resulting social, economic and environmental benefits, by optimising existing green spaces and deploying NBS to develop new multifunctional natural areas and features. However, Polish cities are currently facing several barriers to the development and implementation of NBS as a cost-effective climate mitigation measure, including a lack of relevant experience and technical knowledge, and a shortage of context-specific policy instruments.