ADDRESSING MAJOR SOCIETAL CHALLENGES: CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION-MITIGATION, RISK MANAGEMENT AND RESILIENCE
Climate change and associated risks are among the most significant societal challenges today. These challenges are at the epicenter of the global public debate, since they require immediate management in order to prevent potential threats and disasters. Towards this effort, the scientific community in cooperation with citizens, stakeholders, and decision makers has to conceive, develop and implement solutions, serving the objectives of sustainability and resilience. In this context, most conventional approaches and solutions fail to adopt these guiding principles.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS), based on an eco-systemic approach, constitute a new paradigm for handling these challenges efficiently in a sustainable way. “Climate change adaptation and mitigation” and “Risk management and resilience” have been identified by the EU as the two overarching goals of NbS[1]. The implementation of NbS can offer multiple benefits and major opportunities for dealing with the impacts of climate change, as well as seizing the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, NbS offers potentials to enhance resilience through multiple natural processes and functions against natural and technological hazards, leading to an integrated risk management.
The forum will be a lively debate among multidisciplinary participants on the current knowledge, facts and ongoing research on NbS; related mainly to the questions: “How can NbS offer opportunities for climate change adaptation and mitigation?” and “How can NbS be applied in order to achieve integrated risk management and resilience?”. The forum format is designed to promote the dialogue among the participants, including inspirational key inputs by lead experts and parallel interactive working sessions. The discussions are oriented towards enriching the documented knowledge concerning:
- Identification of integrated holistic cross-sectoral NbS for enhanced risk management;
- Combination of NbS, multiplying their benefits, reducing threats and offering resilience;
- Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation by Nature: urban ecology, urban quality and well-being;
- Integration of NbS into local and regional spatial planning and decision-making;
- Performance monitoring and impact assessment of the deployed NbS;
- Involvement of NbS’ stakeholders in funding and implementation;
- Enhancement of NbS’ cost-effectiveness.
This 2-day Forum, co-organized by ThinkNature H2020 Project and Paris Municipality, aims to bring together multiple stakeholders of different sectors and backgrounds (i.e. scientists, market actors, policy makers), including members of International Organizations, large scale research projects on NbS, pioneer cities, public and financial institutions and green businesses. Over 150 delegates across EU and overseas, representing the key actors in NbS, are expected to attend.