Debate to overcome barriers
To overcome this, we need to rise above the barriers. But which barriers are the most urgent and how can the Building with Nature project help out? During the conference ‘Climate change in the North Sea region’ on March 8, 40 participants from NSR countries and beyond participated in the debate. The discussion took place at different tables. Getting knowledge and insight about the most urgent barriers when it comes to policy and implementation was the goal. The discussions were led by members of the Policy Learning Group of the Building with Nature project (BwN), which was installed one day earlier. The Policy Learning Group BwN will discuss on policy issues and challenges when it comes to Building with Nature solutions, and look for and act upon opportunities for influencing the policy debate in Europe.
Barriers
The most important barriers are related to the aspects of monitoring and performance, business case and institutional settings. The barriers vary greatly per country and per policy setting.
The BwN project and the Policy Learning Group will work on solutions for these barriers over the next two years.
Recommendations and observations
Chair of the Policy Learning Group, Rein van der Kluit concluded with the following recommendations and observations, which were brought forward by the participants of the debate:
- Engage and inform stakeholders instead of over-persuading them;
- Monetizing the different benefits of BwN measures is not simple;System of financing measures, can work against the uptake of BwN solutions;
- Politicians are short team oriented, BwN is a long term approach, adapt your story;
- We need ambassadors for BwN, especially in the area of policy making;
- Don’t use the work ‘pilot’ anymore. We are beyond that stage.
You can find all the recommendations and barriers in the Results of Policy Debate BwN.