Understanding the Economic Value of Nature Base Solutions (NBS) towards Sustainable Built Environments

Dear Colleagues,

The growth of cities is defying urban developers and decision makers, and changes in the future climate conditions are making cities more vulnerable. Resilient adaptive measures include nature-based solutions (NBS) that provide additional ecosystem services when implemented at a large scale. There are several opportunities for ecosystem and urban regeneration with NBS, such as pollution reduction, climate regulation, water flow and erosion regulation, flood prevention and resilience to other natural hazards, water purification and treatment, coastal and wildlife protection, soundscape regulation, biodiversity conservation and habitat creation, and improvement of health and quality of life. In a complementary way, NBS can provide economic development and provision of recreational spaces for social activities.

NBS are developed upon the understanding of nature and natural processes, fostering the preservation of ecosystems integrity, improvement of their sustainable management, and creation of new ecosystems. The EU Research and Innovation policy agenda on NBS and Re-Naturing Cities identified four main goals that can be addressed by NBS: (i) enhance sustainable cities, (ii) restore degraded systems, (iii) develop adaptation and mitigation to climate change, and (iv) improve risk management and resilience.

Practitioners and academics are still struggling to fully grasp the potential long-term impacts of such solutions, and there is a growing wave of research trying to determine the local and global impacts, and, also, the attached costs.

Monetizing these impacts is fundamental to start to understand the economic value of these solutions, the potential interest for private and public investors, and the need for incentives to facilitate their adoption at the urban scale.

This Special Issue should cover the following items:

• Innovative NBS
• Calculation of direct and indirect benefits
• Long-term impacts
• Life cycle costing of NBS
• Innovation in valuation techniques (CBA)
• Incentives and financing of NBS

Dr. Carlos Oliveira Cruz
Dr. Cristina Matos Silva
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.