Progress report on linkages between Front-runner City strategic goals and nature-based solutions goals to inform city plan and indicator development for Front-runner City exemplars. Deliverable 8 (Appendix 8.1) of the Connecting Nature Project

To facilitate a scaling up and embedding of multifunctional nature-based solutions, it is important to create a strategic enabling culture within cities – moving beyond a focus that often rests primarily within one departmental team (for example, spatial planning or green space management) to include a suite of strategic services such as corporate policy, economic development, housing and regeneration, health and social care, transport and to harness the support of elected local politicians. By creating this enabling culture, there are opportunities to identify and mobilise the multifunctional benefits that can accrue from a scaled-up city approach to nature-based solutions, embedding them within a broad range of strategic goals, aligned with indicators that can deliver a coherent place-based framework for improved local places for residents and businesses.

The milestone is a draft document that reports on progress to identify linkages between the Connecting Nature front-runner city strategic goals and nature-based solutions goals to complement city planning and indicator development and to inform the exemplar implementation process. The analysis of this work will be incorporated in Deliverable 8, a report on front-runner cities’ current expertise and experience in nature-based solutions based on a synthesis of outcomes from experiential learning workshops and concluding with a process chart for a transferrable key performance indicators approach to nature-based solutions. The scope of the milestone is to provide a working draft of existing front-runner city organisational culture, in order to identify opportunities to embed indicators for nature-based solutions in the city's strategic context.