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KLIMAFORSK-Stort program klima

NATURACT – Nature-based solutions for climate change: upscaling landscape-based climate mitigation and adaptation actions

Alternative title: NATURACT – Naturbaserte løsninger for klimaendringer: oppskalering av landskapbasert løsninger for klimatiltak og klimatilpasning

Awarded: NOK 24.0 mill.

The NATURACT research project focuses on nature-based solutions as an agent for large-scale transformations in land use and land cover in vulnerable landscapes. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are a promising path forward for massive and no-regret solutions to prioritise nature to integrate climate mitigation measures for emissions reduction and adaptation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change. However, leveraging NBS as an instrument to couple climate mitigation and adaptation action is not without challenges. They lack widespread implementation, are not being implemented at the scale required and barriers on the limits of NBS effectiveness, negative perceptions and knowledge fragmentation limit their wider acceptance. Further to these challenges, NBS for both climate mitigation and adaptation are embedded in the more complex challenge of climate change requiring multi-level and cross-sectoral collaboration between different public actors, private actors, and citizens. As such, interdisciplinary approaches to strengthen academic and non-academic collaboration are needed to meet this challenge. The second year of the NATURACT project has therefore continued to work on i) applying the Systems Oriented Design (SOD) methodology to create an interdisciplinary space for the academic researchers to work across disciplines and ii) using SOD as a point of departure for engaging the different stakeholders at the Hølenelva case site located in Vestby municipality. Further to this work, the NATURACT project has in 2023 also focused on applying the SOD methodology at the Aurland case site, which is also the site selected for detailed work by two of the project’s PhD candidates. SOD is a process to reach a holistic understanding of the issue at hand. It is about mapping complexity - identifying what parts of the system can and should be changed and developing intervention concepts. SOD begins with understanding how worldviews influence our interpretations of the multiple layers in a system. By collectively defining the current system and mapping desirable futures it is possible to move forward towards identifying leverage points and prioritising interventions. The team of NATURACT researchers cover a broad range of disciplines to include climate and land surface modellers, terrestrial ecosystem ecologists, geotechnical engineers, hydrologists, geologists, environmental scientists, landscape architects, designers as well as experts in cultural heritage. Bridging discipline barriers takes time and further to the SOD introduction in 2022, the NATURACT-project partners met for a follow-up workshop in Aurland to reinforce the skills required to better understand the complexity of climate adaptation within the local economic and social context. The main SOD methodology being applied is 'Gigamapping' which is a method to visualise the complexity of the system and 'ZIPPING' (Z for zoom points, I for ideas, P for problems and P for potential) is the core technique to develop a common language to understand the system. Through these techniques, we are able to prioritise leverage points, assess feasibility, and maximise impact of NBS. The case site at Aurland municipality represents the west coast fjord landscape of Norway. The area is experiencing more frequent flooding as well as landslides. The scale of Aurland as a site is rather large with smaller communities placed at different locations, each with its unique context of landscape topography, cultural heritage and natural hazards. Thus, one of the first activities was to narrow the location for conducting workshops with local stakeholders as well as for the PhD students for conducting their fieldwork. Based on the preliminary mapping and scoping at the site, the Undredal valley was selected as the location for conducting the NATURACT workshops. The area is prone to different natural hazards and has a unique cultural heritage as the farmers work to preserve the cultural landscape. The community is also known for being engaged. Thus, two workshops with local inhabitants have been carried out at Undredal in November and December of 2023. The community has a keen awareness of living with natural hazards with main concerns focused on flooding of the river and ensuring the goats have access to their grazing areas and inhabitants have access to and are safe in the village. The landscape architect doctoral studies focus on understanding Undredal in a transdisciplinary endeavor through the notion of site and site as a transdisciplinary construct. The geotechnical engineer doctoral studies in Aurland are being conducted at Ryo and a field site has been established with monitoring equipment to assess the slope stability with and without vegetation. Their studies contribute to documenting the potential of NBS as positive solution that can address tackle the complexity of nature for climate action.

Rapid and far-reaching climate action is needed to avoid severe climate change and achieve climate-neutrality before the end of the century. However, current national pledges on mitigation and adaptation are not enough to stay below the Paris Agreement temperature limits and achieve its adaptation goals. To support a greater scale and pace of change, it is becoming necessary to better integrate mitigation measures for emissions reduction and adaptation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are a promising path forward for massive and no-regret solutions. NBS are gaining traction and uptake in both the public and private sector and as such represent a unifying concept to prioritise nature to integrate climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. NATURACT focuses on NBS as an agent for large-scale transformations in land use and land cover in vulnerable landscapes to integrate mitigation measures for emissions reduction and adaptation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change. This is accomplished through interdisciplinary collaboration and the application of an innovative Systems Oriented Design approach that negotiates the complexity of climate change and NBS interventions. NATURACT delivers outputs on NBS to establish their effectiveness for reducing the risk of climate impacts in large-scale landscapes, to quantify regional and global impacts and feedbacks of NBS interventions and policy implications, and to transform attitudes and values towards NBS for adaptation, mitigation and ultimately climate action. The overall goal is to understand the impact, feedbacks, synergies and trade-offs of NBS to recommend their upscaling for optimising climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.

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Funding scheme:

KLIMAFORSK-Stort program klima