ENHANCING URBAN NATURE PROVISION IN THE NETHERLANDS - Background report

To ensure that we do not waste the potential of NBS due to poor design and implementation leading to the misallocation of their benefits and growing political opposition, a number of organisations have called for the use of safeguards in the form of principle-based standards to support the delivery of high-quality NBS. [...] It examines what these case-studies and the insight they provide into the dynamics of NBS implementation on the ground tell us about the trade-offs that emerge in seeking to deliver multiple benefits and how and why synergies can be generated, as well as the ways in which the different principles – for multiple benefits, inclusion, equity and addressing the underlying causes of climate and biodive. [...] The prevalence of private sector actors in these types of initiatives may also explain the presence of fewer explicit goals – both because of a narrower focus in terms of delivery/responsibility in relation to the provision of urban development and infrastructure and also because of the noted reluctance of such actors to promise benefits that are difficult to monitor/evaluate (e.g. [...] A critical issue for the development of a framework to support the provision of high-quality urban nature is then that of ensuring that this does not serve to further entrench urban inequalities such that the benefits of urban nature flow to powerful groups – governments and business – at the expense of communities and citizens. [...] One of the drivers of the project was the commitments of the National Plan on Restoring and Valorising nature in the city, which sets out the need to develop proximate natural spaces in terms of quality and quantity, embed culture and shared governance and enable citizen participation.