CONEXUS

CONEXUS develops and expands the concept of NBS towards Nature Based Thinking with full integration into policy and practice across different sectors (public, private, research, third sector and civil society). CONEXUS combines nature-based thinking with the idea of place, co-creating context-appropriate NBS for sustainable urbanisation in CELAC and EU cities, using place-making, place-keeping and place-prescribing approaches. We will demonstrate how a place-based approach can incorporate NBS into the cultural imaginary and social life of cities. CONEXUS will promote visions of urban futures with nature-based cities and urbanisation contributing positively to planetary health: reconnecting people with nature and reconnecting healthy more biodiverse restored ecosystems with healthy people.

Project actions

NBS innovations will be delivered at the macro, meso, and micro scales. Novel NBS pilots will combine social innovation with technology to deliver restoration and promote more sustainable urbanisation. A Gender Champion will also ensure gender equality and gender issues foregrounded in project delivery and NBS co-production.

Life-Labs will be created in European (Barcelona, Lisbon and Turin) and CELAC cities (Santiago, São Paulo, Bogotá and Buenos Aires) and novel nature-based thinking methods will be tested. Specific pilots will also involve working directly with local schools and schoolchildren in various Life-labs. At the macro-scale Barcelona’s Life-Lab will cooperate internationally to share and shape green infrastructure strategies and biodiversity and renaturing plans at the city level. At the micro-scale, Barcelona will demonstrate improved biodiversity and environmental performance in urban gardens. For each micro-scale location (NBS intervention), the emphasis will be on documenting their potential for biodiversity and ecosystem service provisioning (i.e. food production), as well as pollutants accumulation and retention.