News

A new handbook published by the European Commission to help decision-makers and practitioners develop impact evaluation frameworks for nature-based solutions was launched this Wednesday, the 5th of May, with contributions from CLEVER Cities and 16 other EU-funded NBS projects and collaborating institutions.

The handbook "Evaluating the impact of nature-based solutions" provides a robust set of indicators and methodologies to assess the impacts of nature-based solutions across 12 societal challenge areas.

CLEVER Cities partners TECNALIA, the Polytechnic University of Milan and the University Hospital of Essen contributed their experiences on NBS monitoring and impact assessment to several sections of the handbook, in particular lessons learned while providing technical and practical support to the project’s Front-Runner cities (Hamburg, London and Milan) on how to apply Theory of Change models to underpin impact evaluations. The three partners also provided significant contributions to the handbook section on Reflexive Monitoring of NBS.

The handbooks’ set of indicators and methodologies has been developed as part of the European Taskforce for NBS Impact Assessment (NBS TF2), with the objective of creating a common understanding about impact evaluation frameworks for nature-based solutions at different scales, and will serve as a reference for relevant EU policies and activities. The future work of the Impact Assessment Taskforce will likely include the joint preparation of NBS impact assessment reports based on the outcomes of Horizon 2020-funded NBS projects.

The new handbook is available for download here.