Building resilience through urban natural assets

Project summary

Building on the previous UNA programme work funded by SwedBio since 2014, the overarching impact of the newest project under the UNA programme, Urban Natural Assets: Resilience and Restoration for Life (UNA Resilience), is to transform development trajectories for African cities towards those that improve sustainable development of, and interconnectedness with, their surrounding natural systems along three interlinked urban pillars (governance, planning and finance), through building urban resilience, sufficient agency and momentum for an unfolding process of transformative change.

This project is funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), through SwedBio at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Project aims

UNA Resilience overall objectives are to:

Understand the dynamic drivers of risk as well as the socio-economic landscape in African cities and how this relates to unlocking natures ability to provide a multitude of benefits for urban populations.

Improve the framework and mainstreaming conditions for nature-based measures that build resilience, through a sustained, deep transdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder, whole-of-society co-creation approach.

Mainstream and implement tailored approaches for urban nature-based resilience, including the sustainable utilisation and restoration of ecosystems in order to improve good governance, planning practices and access to finance.

Scale urban nature-based resilience approaches, demonstrating their ability to support reduced risks, vulnerabilities, and inequalities, and improve sustainable livelihoods over longer timeframes.

Align related activities and outputs with international policy and legal processes, such as those frameworks provided for by international environmental and human rights law, through outreach and advocacy campaigns and the promotion of strengthened multi-level governance systems.