Nature Smart Cities across the 2 Seas (NSCiti2S).

Decision-makers in cities and town lack tools to justify the use of 'city-finance' to fund green infrastructure climate investments for their town or city. In this research, we will co-design a new business model for local authorities, that supports senior managers and finance officers in approving and justifying the use of 'city-finance' to fund green infrastructure climate investments. This approach will be co-designed with the city partners whilst delivering pilot studies. This will incorporate the approval processes, financial and legal systems of local authorities that are used to 'sign-off' on investments. The work will explore how a local authority can use the market and non-market values, cash and non-cash benefits that are attributable to green infrastructure, into an economic case to justify the investment in urban green infrastructure. The project demonstrates how investments in urban green can result in a net positive gain to 'city- finance' or a local authority's triple bottom line (economic, social and ecological values). This process will help identify the cash flow analysis of green infrastructure climate investments and allow the business model to be developed, tested and validated directly with input from the end-user - the local authorities

Keywords:ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNANCE, NATURE DEVELOPMENT, URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Disciplines:Applied economics, Environmental management, Agricultural and natural resource economics, environmental and ecological economics

Project type:Collaboration project