Nature-based solutions in spatial planning and policies for climate change adaptation: A literature review

Abstract

Nature-based solutions (NbSs) are recognised as relevant to spatial planning in addressing societal challenges, although their uptake is limited and fragmented to some case studies, and difficulties emerge from their implementation and operationalisation. The research developed a literature review to investigate how NbS has been considered for its implementation and operationalisation in spatial planning and how NbS has been included across different policy instruments and used to address climate change adaptation (CCA). The results highlighted: Firstly, the review contributed to bridge the gap in NbS implementation and operationalisation by proposing a novel three-dimensional categorisation system to guide the selection of suitable NbS principles to address societal challenges; secondly, this study still revealed gaps in some policy areas, despite the effort to extensively apply NbS across diverse policy instruments to CCA. Overall, the review further emphasises the need for future research focused on monitoring and evaluating NbS's effectiveness to CCA.

Keywords: Climate change adaptation; Nature-based solutions; Policy instruments; Spatial planning.

Fig. 1

Overview of the literature review process. Based on the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for systematic reviews

Fig. 2

NbS umbrella concept. Adapted from Cohen-Shacham et al. (2016, 2019), European Commission (2021)

Fig. 3

NbS principle frameworks and their corresponding scope for NbS implementation and operationalisation. Each square's colour shows its priority within the 'principle framework': the first square is the top priority, the next is secondary, and the last is the least. A blank square means that there is no third dimension

Fig. 4

Steps for planning NBS. Source: Pascual et al. (2017), Nesshöver et al. (2017), Raymond et al. (2017b), Gulsrud et al. (2018), Dorst et al. (2019), Albert et al. (2019, 2021), Longato et al. (2023)