From Nature-based Solutions to Investable Practice Evidence, financing pathways and lessons from Invest4Nature

If nature-based solutions (NbS) deliver clear environmental, social and economic benefits, what is preventing their wider uptake?
This booklet explores the evidence, financing pathways, tools and real-world experiences needed to answer that question.
One of the key barriers lies in the gap between awareness and action: between recognising the value of NbS and integrating them into concrete investment and policy decisions.
Invest4Nature was launched to address this gap. By strengthening the evidence base on the economic and financial performance of NbS, and by engaging stakeholders across public and private sectors, the project has focused on making NbS more credible,
visible and actionable. Crucially, the work is grounded in real-life Living Labs across Europe where NbS cases are evaluated and solutions are tested.
This booklet brings together the key insights from this work. It offers a structured overview of research from Invest4Nature: how NbS functions within market ecosystems, the current state of financing and its limitations, the role of public actors and how private capital can be unlocked to enable implementations. Most importantly, it highlights lessons learned from local experiences and translates them into practical considerations for policymakers, cities, investors
and practitioners. As Europe advances towards climate resilience, the question is no longer whether NbS are relevant, but how they can be deployed
at scale. We hope this booklet contributes to that transition, supporting informed choices on NbS and fostering the conditions for their wider uptake.

Agnieszka Dziubała (City of Poznań), Andrea Staccione (CMCC), Barbara Coelho (Cascais
Ambiente), Caterina Guidi (CMCC),Chiara Bidoli (CMCC), Isobel Fletcher (Horizon Nua), Lydia Lienhart (Joanneum Research), Linda Romanovska (Melomys Advisory), Lone Telling (Aarhus Municipality), Małgorzata Bronikowska (City of Poznań), Marianne Zandersen (Aarhus University), Martina Brophy (Horizon Nua), Mette Holm (Aarhus Municipality), Nicola Leonardi (Engineering Ingegneria Informatica), Vanessa Weiß (Joanneum Research), Sigrid Mourits-Andersen (Klima-Bundnis Tirol), Paul Mahony (Oppla), Simone Taddeo (CMCC), Wenting Chen (NIVA).