REVIEW article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Ecosystem Restoration
This article is part of the Research TopicRestoring Our Blue Planet: Advances in Marine and Coastal RestorationView all 12 articles
Exploring nature-based solutions’ effectiveness indicators potential for coastal climate change adaptation: A systematic review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Veneto, Italy
- 2RAAS, Foundation Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), Lecce, Apulia, Italy
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Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) are increasingly incorporated for climate change adaptation and risk reduction, yet the lack of a standardized evaluation framework and definitions hinder the accurate assessment of their effectiveness. This systematic review, covering articles published between 2008 to 2023 obtained through Scopus, aims to bolster NBS applicability by focusing on effectiveness indicators and evaluation methods used within a wide array of case studies where NBS influence climate adaptation through ecosystem service provisioning. The 27 analyzed key articles include a diverse range of coastal NBSs, including 36 case studies, often implemented at the micro-or meso-scale, each designed to address facets of climate adaptation through the provisioning of ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration (n = 16), erosion reduction (n = 11), flood reduction (n = 16), or improvement of water quality (n = 15). The review revealed a prevalent reliance on process-based performance indicators (51.9%) often applied without accounting for synergies and trade-offs, and/or incorporating impact indicators (70.4%) that assess changes in environmental conditions in order to evaluate NBSs' effectiveness. Monitoring focused primarily on environmental, hydrological, climatic, and biological performance and impact indicators, while frequently neglecting socioeconomic factors. A shift towards a nested, performance-centric approach that incorporates a broader range of socio-economic impact indicators and expands spatio-temporal scales could enhance NBSs adoption. Utilizing advanced data techniques and modelling indicators can further strengthen the evidence base and facilitate the adoption of NBSs for climate adaptation.
Keywords: climate change adaptation, Coastal and transitional ecosystems, ecosystem services, Effectivenessindicators, Nature-based solutions
Received: 01 Apr 2025; Accepted: 16 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Horneman, Torresan, Furlan and Critto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Silvia Torresan
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