The NPC project aims to operationalise the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity agenda at the city level by going further to explicitly integrate the economic and climate value of urban nature. It provides a conceptual framework, comprising recommended policy actions and a policy checklist, to support governments in embedding a clear NPC vision into strategies and plans, tailoring policy instruments to place-based characteristics, promoting integrated urban green infrastructure, mobilising sustainable finance and private investment, and strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems so that urban nature can generate multiple co-benefits for society.
Nature-positive cities
A ‘nature-positive’ approach goes beyond reducing environmental harm to actively restore, regenerate, and enhance biodiversity encompassing both species and ecosystems. The project promotes a nature-positive city (NPC) approach to translate this ambition into practice at the urban scale to create more liveable, resilient and sustainable urban areas through urban nature.
About the project
What are the key elements of NPC approach?
While nature-positive cities may entail trade-offs across policy objectives, they also have the potential to generate synergistic impacts across climate, well-being and economic outcomes. As illustrated, biodiversity acts as a foundational driver of NPC, supporting interconnected benefits across the other three components and reinforcing co-benefits between them.
Biodiversity-positive
The NPC approach fundamentally aims to achieve biodiversity-positive outcomes as its core objective. This goes beyond increasing the quantity of green and blue spaces to also encompass their quality, functionality, and connectivity across the entire urban ecosystem. It does not require focusing on a single site or intervention; rather, it calls for improving ecological conditions at the city-scale.
Climate-positive
The climate-positive element of the NPC approach leverages biodiversity-positive interventions to deliver measurable benefits for urban climate mitigation and adaptation. It aims to reduce urban heat, enhance cooling capacity, increase carbon sequestration, lower net emissions, and improve resilience to climate-related hazards such as floods, storms, and heatwaves.
Well-being positive
The well-being-positive element focuses on improving public health, social equity, and overall quality of urban life through nature-positive interventions. It aims to enhance physical and mental health, reduce social and environmental inequalities, and foster social cohesion and inclusive, liveable urban environments.
Economic-positive
The economic-positive element seeks to unlock the value of urban ecosystems to stimulate sustainable economic growth while supporting biodiversity and other co-benefits. It aims to expand nature-based business opportunities and eco-tourism, increase property values and investment in green infrastructure, and reduce costs for urban services through natural solutions such as stormwater management and flood mitigation.
How it works
The mission of the NPC project is to provide tailored policy advice based on the OECD’s conceptual framework for NPC, to help cities navigate on how to manage trade-offs and maximise benefits from urban nature restoration and enhancement.
The objectives of the NPC project are to support national, regional and city governments in taking following actions:
- Embed a clear NPC vision into strategies or plans. Strategies should integrate biodiversity, climate, well-being and economic objectives with measurable targets, and align nature-positive goals with broader urban planning, governance and investment frameworks to ensure coordinated and long-term action at a city-scale.
- Tailor policy instruments to place-based contexts. Policy instruments need to reflect local conditions and support the integration of nature-positive measures into development while managing trade-offs with competing priorities.
- Promote integrated urban green infrastructure to deliver multiple co-benefits. Urban green infrastructure should be designed to enhance a range of environmental quality and functionality. This includes integration of nature-based solutions, connected green and blue networks, and clear technical standards to enhance multiple objectives.
- Mobilise sustainable finance and private investment. This involves leveraging mechanisms should support both public and private investment in nature-positive initiatives, particularly where urban green space is privately owned. This involves with combining tools such as PES, green credits, tax incentives or PPPs to cover upfront and long-term maintenance costs.
- Strengthen monitoring and evaluation systems . Systems capture outcomes at both site level and city scale, including ecological quality, connectivity, accessibility and co-benefits, thereby enabling evidence-based policy adjustments, and improving transparency and accountability
The project’s key outputs will include the following:
- Benchmarking urban nature and biodiversity performance. The performance of cities on urban nature and biodiversity will be assessed through international benchmarking against OECD peers. Using experimental OECD indicators and international monitoring frameworks, the analysis will measure both the extent of urban nature (e.g. tree cover and green space) and the well-being benefits it provides, while tracking progress towards nature-positive targets over time.
- Policy analysis for a nature-positive transition. National and local policies, governance frameworks, financing mechanisms, and monitoring systems related to urban nature and biodiversity will be analysed. The analysis will identify opportunities to strengthen policy coherence, integrate nature-based solutions into urban development and infrastructure planning, and mobilise investment for nature-positive transitions.
- Knowledge-sharing and peer learning. A series of seminars will bring together leading OECD cities to exchange experiences, best practices, and lessons learned on nature-positive urban development, fostering peer learning and international collaboration.
- International outreach and visibility. In collaboration with partner organisations, the project and its findings will be disseminated through major international forums, including UN Biodiversity and Climate Conferences, to support global awareness and wider adoption of nature-positive urban approaches.
Related publications
Get in touch
If you are interested to learn more about the project or to get involved, please contact:
Tadashi MATSUMOTO - tadashi.matsumoto@oecd.org
Miu TOBAYASHI - miu.tobayashi@oecd.org