Demonstrating wetlands as Nature-Based Solutions on resilience development to extreme drought across European cities and landscapes

General Information

Climate change is exacerbating the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts worldwide. Despite this pressing reality, there exists a widespread underestimation of drought risk among the European population. In this critical context, wetlands emerge as a promising solution for enhancing water management and mitigating the impact of severe droughts, since they store a large portion of the Earth's freshwater and have the potential to recharge local aquifers. Despite the increasing recognition of wetlands as Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), there remains a lack of comprehensive quantitative evidence and understanding regarding their cost-effectiveness under different European conditions.
The objective of the NBS4Drought initiative is to systematically demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of wetland-based NBS in sustainable water management, particularly in alleviating the impacts of extreme droughts, and to expedite their widespread adoption across Europe. The outcomes will underscore the efficiency, replicability, and sustainability of NBS across diverse regions, furnishing stakeholders with compelling technical, economic, and social evidence to advocate for NBS in climate change adaptation strategies. To achieve this, 7 different wetland showcases identified from 5 distinct bioclimatic zones in Europe have been selected and will undergo a collaborative co-creation and co-development process, ensuring community involvement and the long-term maintenance of these NBS. The data gathered from the advanced monitoring program will drive hydrological, life cycle and socioeconomic assessments to demonstrate their cost-effectiveness, alongside the development of tools and policies to facilitate their replication throughout Europe. Citizen science initiatives and a multi-stakeholder approach, coupled with a robust communication and exploitation strategy, will be pivotal in fostering capacity building across European nations.

Hereon leads the work package entitled ‘Resilience enhancement of NBS towards drought’ This work packages adopts a comprehensive system perspective to examine social, economic, ecological, and climatic aspects of resilience affected by droughts and evaluates the impact of different NBS as drought management measures in the system. The main goal is to identify bottlenecks in the cost-effective implementation of NBS as drought management measures and model regional and European resilience enhancement under different climatic scenarios. WP5 develops a drought resilience modelling framework and assesses drought risk perception in 7 countries. A system dynamics model integrated with an agent based model will provide a strong decision support space to test and evaluate the NBS setting allowing decisionmakers with a "sandbox" for testing drought risk management pathways.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-02-1-two-stage
Project Type	Innovation Action (IA)
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 101181351
Co-ordinator	Aarhus Universitet (DK)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
7,981,953	544,150

Contact Person at Hereon

Dr. Maria Máñez Costa, Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS, KGN) Phone: +49 40 226 338 408 E-mail contact

Participants

Aarhus Kommune (DK), Ajuntament de Granollers (ES), Biuro Urzadzania Lasu I Geodezji Lesnej (PL), Bodensee Stiftung (DE), Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg (DE), Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche (IT), EIFER Europäisches Institut für Energieforschung EDF KIT EWIV (DE), European Science Communication Institute (Esci) GGmbh (DE), Fundació Rivus (ES), ICLEI European Secretariat Gmbh (ICLEI Europasekretariat) (DE), Institut Muniicipal D Urbanisme (ES), Naturalea Conservacio SL (ES), Poleski Park Narodowy (PL), Politecnico di Milano (IT), Samsø Kommune (DK), Samsø Landboforening (DK), SGGW Warsaw University of Life Sciences (PL), Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (NL), UICN, Bureau De Representation Aupres De L'Union Europeenne AISBL (BE), Universitat Politecnica De Catalunya (ES), Universität Graz (AT), University of Aarhus (DK), Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy w Lublinie (PL)

Last Update: 02. September 2025