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

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.

The project intended to increase awareness of NBS in Poland as a cost-effective urban climate mitigation and climate protection measure. It seeked 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. The project aimed 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 included an online course, training events across Poland and a study visit to Germany. The project also fostered the development of a Polish network of NBS experts and worked closely with a number of Polish cities, such as Poznan, Krakow, Wroclaw and Warsaw.

• The project has trained and networked specialists on NBS and established a database accessible to municipalities seeking specialists to implement NBS measures.  
• A catalogue on NBS was developed and sent to various target groups and made available digitally.  
• Over 100 Polish cities have received a guidance document on NBS and over 400 stakeholders have been trained on NBS.