Developing NbS scaling approaches to achieve just transformative change – Insights from multifunctional agriculture in the Netherlands

How can we promote a sustainable and just future while staying within planetary boundaries? Nature-based solutions (NbS) - actions that work with nature to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and other societal challenges - are part of the answer. Many pilot NbS projects exist, but scaling them across regions, sectors, and communities is complex. When benefits and costs are unevenly distributed, questions of justice and fairness arise. These challenges are amplified when NbS are implemented at larger scales. 

FairNature is an international research project co-funded by Biodiversa+ that develops approaches for scaling NbS that are fair, effective and transformative. The project brings together eight universities and research institutes across Europe, working with diverse stakeholders in six case studies in Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Spain. 

A key feature of FairNature’s approach is reflexive learning, where stakeholders and scientists collaborate in ‘reflexive labs’ within and across the six case studies. This helps us explore the justice implications of scaling NbS and evaluate existing practices – from their efficiency to their potential for fair application through scaling to new contexts over a wider geographical range. 

In our research we consider multiple dimensions of scaling: scaling up (to higher policy levels), scaling down (reallocating necessary resources), scaling out (replicating over a wider special scale), scaling in (ensuring to have the institutional infrastructure in place), and scaling deep (changing norms, beliefs, values, and practices). Our understanding of justice is equally multi-dimensional, covering procedural justice (fairness in the decision-making process), distributive justice (fairness in distribution of resources), and recognition justice (acknowledging diverse values and voices of stakeholders).  

The Action Case in the Netherlands concerns the upscaling of multifunctional agriculture-NbS, including sustainable housing, by looking at various existing pilots on farms and in municipalities. This Action Case has a layered governance structure with local professionals, councils and farmers; an intermediate layer of strategic experts; and national ministries and farmers' organisations.

 The main project outcome will be the FairNature Guide: a practical framework with tools and policy recommendations to support NbS scaling which is fair and effective, ultimately supporting just transformative change for people and nature.