Climate change and biodiversity loss are two of the biggest, yet deeply interconnected, crises facing our planet today. Climate change is directly accelerating the loss of natural habitats and wildlife. wildlife, which in turn rapidly reduces the ability of nature to adapt to changing and extreme climate conditions. Solving these global problems therefore requires comprehensive and interconnected policies. The so-called Nature-based Solutions (NbS), which are also actively and long-term supported by the European LIFE programme.

The European Commission defines nature-based solutions as cost-effective approaches that are directly inspired and supported by nature, while simultaneously providing not only environmental but also tangible social and economic benefits. These innovative solutions bring enormous benefits not only for the protection of nature itself, but also for improving the quality of life of the population.. By helping to maintain and restore diverse ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and wetlands, they significantly increase biodiversity. In addition, they actively capture greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane from the atmosphere and store them safely directly in vegetation and soil. They also function as extremely effective tools for disaster risk reduction, as wetlands, coastal zones and forests act as natural barriers that absorb shocks and protect against floods, extreme storms, rising sea levels, prolonged droughts and devastating wildfires.

One of the most striking achievements of European efforts is the restoration of wetlands aimed at direct flood prevention. Floodplains cover approximately 7 % of Europe's land area, but in the past 70 to 90 % of these were seriously degraded by intensive drainage for the needs of rapid urbanisation and agriculture. Projects such as LIFE+SCALLUVIA a LIFE SPARC have successfully and permanently restored critically important floodplain forests, reed beds and dynamic intertidal zones in large areas of the Scheldt estuary in Belgium. These systematic steps have not only encouraged the return of rare animals such as the river otter, the northern otter and the common tern, but have also massively reduced the risk of flooding caused by high water levels and storm surges in this densely populated area near the port of Antwerp. Both projects have been so successful that they have significantly contributed to the implementation of the Flemish flood control „Sigma Plan“, and the revitalized valley has earned a nomination for the declaration of a new national park.

Equally vital and urgent is the massive restoration of degraded peatlands. Although peatlands cover only a meager 3 % of the Earth's total surface, they act as some of the most important global carbon stores, providing homes for endangered species and effectively purifying water. The tragic reality is that only 10 % of Europe's peatlands are in good ecological condition today. Decades of drainage and mining have turned these precious lands from carbon sinks into massive carbon producers. Through initiatives LIFE MULTI PEAT a LIFE Peat Restore In several EU member states, thousands of hectares of these areas have been successfully re-irrigated. Thanks to the blocking of drainage ditches, peatlands have once again been transformed into huge natural „sponges“ that absorb water during heavy rains and gradually and evenly release it into the landscape during long periods of drought. There have even been successful experiments with sustainable farming directly on flooded peatlands (so-called paludiculture).

Nature-inspired solutions also play a key role in protecting and adapting fragile coastal areas that face rising sea levels and aggressive coastal erosion. Healthy and intact coastal ecosystems are indispensable for climate change mitigation because they directly absorb vast amounts of so-called coastal blue carbon.. While the project Life Posidonia Andalucia focused on the vital importance of saving Posidonia seagrass meadows in southern Spain, an innovative Swedish project LIFECOASTadapt demonstrated the massive benefits of replacing expensive and often inefficient hard engineering structures with soft, natural solutions. The project successfully tested the removal of concrete structures, the restoration of natural dunes and the targeted replanting of native coastal plants along a 500-kilometer stretch of sandy coastline.

Significant climate extremes and increasingly severe droughts have also required an innovative approach in forest management through the concept of „climate-smart forestry.“ A great example of how to prevent devastating forest fires in practice is LIFE LANDSCAPE FIRE from Portugal. A combination of deliberate controlled burning and specially managed cattle grazing has drastically reduced the amount of dry combustible material in the country. This fascinating approach has not only revitalized the local rural economy, but has also prevented a huge amount of emissions from potential fires – the reduction has been estimated at the equivalent of 20 million tons of CO2 per year. Sustainable agroforestry and agroecology (as in the case of the project Farm LIFE), where crop cultivation is intelligently combined with trees and grazing livestock. The shift from monoculture to diverse polyculture has clearly improved the health of agricultural soils and dramatically increased the overall ability of farms to withstand climate shocks.

To fully realise the potential of these approaches, strong and long-term support at government and European level through strategic integrated projects (such as the French project LIFE IP ARTISAN, which integrates nature-based solutions into national policies). The European Green Deal, the ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and the EU Biodiversity Strategy to restore 20 % of all degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems would simply not be possible without these strategies. Three decades of projects under the LIFE programme are now irrefutable and living proof that protecting nature and investing in its natural renewal processes is not only the right way, but also by far the most cost-effective way to ensure a resilient and sustainably habitable future for all of us.. JRi&CO2AI