Measuring the contribution of urban nature-based solutions (NbS) to climate change adaptation is an essential, though complex, step towards understanding who benefits from them, as well as when, where, how and why. However, urban NbS are also framed as being able to meet multiple objectives relating to biodiversity conservation as well as associated social challenges. The complexity of addressing multiple challenges, combined with conflicting visions of what climate adaptation means at the local level, further burdens the identification of clear and relevant goals, processes and information to track progress (i.e. contributions) towards urban adaptation. To explore and question how current on-the-ground practices address this complexity, we analysed a global dataset of indicators (n = 750 indicators) from 74 NbS projects in 61 cities across 40 countries based on an assessment of the literature regarding information and processes used for evaluating urban NbS for adaptation. This was combined with interviews with local actors who evaluate these NbS projects (n = 15). Our results indicate that current urban NbS projects do not appear to balance climate adaptation with other goals, nor do they uniformly conform to prevailing technical standards of quality of traditional monitoring, evaluation and learning processes. Currently NbS projects tend to primarily prioritise shorter-term high-quality ecological indicators, mostly related to biodiversity, while generally other longer-term social and technical indicators lack quality despite capturing a diversity of potential medium- to long-term contributions of NbS. Various political and social factors that influence the way urban NbS to adaptation are evaluated typically go beyond evaluation purposes and range from using indicators to promote NbS as cost-effective solutions or particular political agendas. The diversity of what makes good information and processes to measure contributions to urban adaptation bolsters calls for establishing processes for flexible, commonly agreed-upon guiding principles. We suggest locally grounded recommendations to help identify fit-for-purpose information and processes to evaluate the potential of urban NbS to address interconnected climate, biodiversity, and societal challenges.

中文翻译：

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衡量城市气候适应之外基于自然的解决方案的贡献


衡量基于城市自然的解决方案 （NbS） 对气候变化适应的贡献是了解谁从中受益以及何时、何地、如何和为什么受益的重要但复杂的步骤。然而，城市 NbS 也被定义为能够满足与生物多样性保护相关的多个目标以及相关的社会挑战。应对多重挑战的复杂性，加上对气候适应在地方层面意味着什么的相互冲突的愿景，进一步增加了确定明确和相关的目标、流程和信息以跟踪城市适应进展（即贡献）的负担。为了探索和质疑当前的实地实践如何解决这种复杂性，我们分析了来自 40 个国家 61 个城市的 74 个 NbS 项目的全球指标数据集（n = 750 个指标），基于对用于评估城市 NbS 适应的信息和过程的文献的评估。这与对评估这些 NbS 项目的当地参与者的采访相结合 （n = 15）。我们的结果表明，当前的城市 NbS 项目似乎没有平衡气候适应与其他目标，也没有统一符合传统监测、评估和学习过程的现行技术质量标准。目前，NbS 项目往往主要优先考虑短期高质量的生态指标，主要与生物多样性有关，而其他长期社会和技术指标通常缺乏质量，尽管捕捉到了 NbS 的潜在中长期贡献的多样性。 影响城市 NbS 适应评估方式的各种政治和社会因素通常超出了评估目的，范围从使用指标将 NbS 推广为具有成本效益的解决方案或特定的政治议程。衡量城市适应贡献的良好信息和流程的多样性，支持了建立灵活的、普遍认可的指导原则的流程的呼声。我们提出基于当地的建议，以帮助确定适合目的的信息和流程，以评估城市 NbS 在应对相互关联的气候、生物多样性和社会挑战方面的潜力。