AUTHORS: Peter Hjerp – Patrick ten Brink – Keti Medarova-Bergstrom – Leonardo Mazza – Marianne Kettunen – Daniela Russi – Jennifer McGuinn – Paola Banfi – Guillermo Hernández

Investments in nature and green infrastructure have helped meet Cohesion Policy objectives and vice-versa. This new guide produced by IEEP and Milieu presents some examples, tools and approaches, making it a useful toolkit for stakeholders developing and implementing Cohesion Policy up to 2020.

The Guide is aimed at all the stakeholders engaged in Cohesion Policy and its implementation. This includes those who are developing the partnership agreements and Operational Programmes, to those setting regional objectives, plans and processes and finally, those selecting, assessing and implementing major projects.

The Guide is also aimed at stakeholders. This includes those who are interested in furthering the Cohesion Policy objectives and seeing how working with nature can help achieve these, and those stakeholders interested in seeing how to make use of Cohesion Policy funding for nature to realise conservation benefits and wider ecosystem service benefits.

Furthermore, the Guide will support regional and national authorities in meeting their legal obligations in respect to legislation on biodiversity conservation (notably the Bird and Habitats Directives), as well as compliance with a range of other commitments under the wider body of EU environmental law.

The Guide addresses issues such as water security, climate change, health, wellbeing and culture where the nature-Cohesion Policy interface can help contribute to meeting their objectives.

Key questions the Guide aims to answer:
• What are the values of nature and how are they important for Cohesion Policy objectives?
• How can Cohesion Policy tools and approaches be used to enable current and secure future multi-benefits from nature?
• What can we learn from practical experiences to inform regional development?