What drives landowners to adopt nature-based retention in a fragile Mediterranean landscape?

As climate change intensifies hydro-meteorological extremes across Europe, nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly promoted as effective tools for flood risk reduction while delivering multiple environmental co-benefits. Most NBS, however, are implemented through small, locally driven interventions rather than large-scale programmes, and their role in fragmented landscapes depends strongly on who owns and manages the land. While public authorities have expanded their engagement through policy frameworks and funding schemes, flood-relevant NBS on private land remain largely shaped by individual landowner decisions.

This research presents comparative case studies from the Liguria region (north-western Italy), where steep slopes, dense drainage networks and widespread land abandonment have increased runoff, erosion and flood risk. In this context, private landowners are often the main actors maintaining or restoring landscape features such as terraces, dry-stone walls, small drainage systems and vegetated retention structures that influence local water retention and flow pathways.

Based on semi-structured interviews with private landowners who have realised such interventions, the study analyses the background for their decisions, through the following aspects: (i) landowners’ relationships with their land (productive, recreational or mixed); (ii) the motivations driving their engagement in nature-based water and land management; (iii) the role of financial, technical and social support in enabling implementation; and (iv) the environmental and socio-economic effects perceived after the interventions. The analysis follows an established framework for understanding private initiatives in natural water retention under different institutional and territorial conditions.

The work provides empirical examples of how nature-based solutions are initiated and implemented by private actors in a specific, hydro-geologically fragile landscape. By documenting motivations, enabling conditions and perceived outcomes, the study contributes to the growing research field on NBS by offering grounded evidence from local practice, supporting the design of more effective policies and incentive schemes for wider uptake.