Each piece of advice is quite general, while the examples provided often are more detailed and specific to the context they belong to or the societal challenges they address. While all advice and examples may inspire actors across the Nordics to do something similar, they can often also be adapted to other societal challenges. In any case, NBS and policies supporting them should always be designed with the local context in mind.
Summary of recommendations from the policy handbook:
Raise awareness and build knowledge of what NBS are, how they function and their benefits. Ecological as well as a lack of practical skills for NBS implementation have been identified as barriers. Raising awareness and building knowledge about NBS can be done in many ways, from children’s education and information campaigns to capacity building among practitioners. Among the Nordic examples highlighted in the handbook, we find training and certification programs for contractors and machine operators, online resource platforms, capacity building programs for public actors, specific guidance materials for implementation, and ways to involve youth in NBS initiatives.
Work to secure long-term funding. Insufficient funding has been mentioned by informants as a barrier for implementing NBS. Funding is often perceived as short-termed, insufficient to cover the costs or reliant on municipal budgets which can be scarce in many municipalities. In some cases, existing funding schemes are skewed towards traditional and grey solutions and may be revised to also support NBS. Our advice addresses these barriers by highlighting examples from the Nordics on how to facilitate private funding, earmark governmental funds, and utilise EU funding and stormwater fees to support NBS implementation and maintenance.
NBS need to be integrated across policies. Many of the barriers mentioned by informants relate to the fact that NBS are a fairly new concept in policy and planning, which needs to be integrated into existing systems to mainstream NBS as the preferred option to address societal challenges. Our advice addresses this by suggesting how NBS can be integrated in land-use planning on a national and local level, collaborate across municipal borders on common challenges, capitalise on infrastructure projects and consider a range of policy tools and principles (e.g., mitigation hierarchy, no net loss and zoning overhauls) to ensure more NBS through land-use planning. This is exemplified with real-life cases from the Nordic countries demonstrating its use.
Evidence-based and adaptive management are key principles when working with nature and ecosystems. A barrier to choosing NBS is that it can take more time to fully unfold their effects, as compared to "grey" solutions. Therefore, policies need to support monitoring and documentation of effects and experiences with NBS to learn for future projects. Some Nordic examples are assessment frameworks for NBS, mapping of ecosystems and land use, promoting decision-making support tools, cost-benefit analyses and inclusion of traditional knowledge.
Involving stakeholders and collaborations between different actors and sectors is central for NBS implementation to succeed. Stakeholder engagement can ensure local adaptation, acceptance and a sense of ownership. Policies can support this for example through guidelines for stakeholder involvement, NBS programmes focusing on citizens, establishing interdisciplinary networks, and promoting cross-sectoral collaborations with private actors. Evidence-based policy development is a robust way of developing policies that consider the existing local policy context, set targets for climate and environmental goals as well as integrate the interdisciplinary perspective.