Designing Sponge Cities for multiple benefits: integrating nature-based solutions to create sustainable places

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2019

End date

12/31/2023

Budget

476,748 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Climate change will intensify urban and global problems like flooding, bad water quality, summer heat episodes, air pollution and biodiversity reduction. In China and Europe, there are attempts to counteract theses negative trends by using nature-based solutions (NBS), which are positive for biodiversity, can help to alleviate the above mentioned problems and in addition provide secondary benefits to humans like increased well-being and recreation possibilities. The project "Designing Sponge Cities for multiple benefits: integrating NBS to create sustainable places - through Innovation, Policy, Health and Environmental Research (DeSCIPHER)" uses the idea of "Sponge Cities" where NBS are used to manage stormwater (precipitation running off from impervious surfaces) reduce water and air pollution, high temperatures and noise, and improve recreation and health opportunities. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, NIVA started in 2020 /2021 a cooperation with Duke-Kunshan University (Prof. Kathinka Fürst, Prof. Wanggi Jaung) and sub-contracted the NIVA China office to conduct field work. However, our original plans of conducting interviews and running the choice experiment face-to-face had to be shifted again as China went to a complete lockdown in early 2022. So, all interview guides and the survey tool for the choice experiment had to be adapted in order to carry out all research activities online. The online city survey, which was sent out in autumn 2021 had very low response rates. 30 surveys were completed in Norway, only 2 in the UK (plus in addition 4 from a previous version) and only very few in China. The data from Norway shows that it is mainly larger cities, which are interested in NBS. The answers reveal that NBS are mainly used in the context of stormwater management and to increase biodiversity, but also to provide recreation opportunities and create an aesthetically appealing environment. As main obstacles or challenges for more NBS the respondents mentioned the need of more public funds and that better coordination between different actors in the city government is needed including mechanisms for cross-agency financing of NBS. Another challenge is the lacking experience with NBS and the need for more knowledge in the city administration on how to plan and implement NBS. Respondents emphasize that the consider a stronger political backing and a higher public awareness and request for NBS as crucial for more NBS in the future. Given the low response rate to the city online survey in China it will be unfortunately not be possible to compare and triangulate the findings from the online survey with information which was gained in interviews with city representatives. These interviews were carried out by the NIVA China office, partly face to face, partly online and some respondents preferred to answer per e-mail. The choice experiment survey was adjusted after the first pre-testing. As the term NBS was difficult to understand by the participants, the term NBS was replaced by “green spaces in cities”. The survey has undergone another round of pre-testing in spring 2022 and was implemented in Chinese language in the software Qualtrics. It will be sent out to participants using a company specialized in surveys at the end of 2022. The master thesis (supervised by NIVA, University of Oslo, University of Berlin) with the title “Using the SIMulated Water Erosion (SIMWE) hydrological model to analyse potential flooding hotspots and the effects of Low Impact Developments (LIDs) - A case study for the management of the Alna River catchment in Oslo, Norway.” was finished in spring 2022. It has shown that the implementation of LIDs can reduce flooding extend and depth for typical 30 minutes rainstorms with a 20 year return period. The literature review on financing mechanisms for NBS used in stormwater management is still ongoing and will be finished in 2023. We noticed that there are many specific solutions, where details seem to matter (i.e. combinations of funding with special marketing measures) for the success of a program. This makes it difficult to characterize and compare financing mechanisms on an overarching level. The UK partners will officially end the DeSCIPHER project at the end of 2022, the Chinese partners have already ended the project from their side earlier. The official final event was an online workshop titled “Modelling Ecosystem Restoration for Multiple Benefits in Urban and Natural Environments”. It was jointly hosted by Yunnan University (Institute of International Rivers and Eco-security) and UKCEH (the DeSCIPHER project) and took place on 1st and 2nd November 2022 (each day from 0800-1100 UK (GMT) and 1600-1900 China time). Due to the delicate political situation in China the number of workshop participants was limited to 30 people mainly coming from the academic sector.