APE participated in the European Business & Nature Summit 2023 on “Harnessing nature’s potential: Exploring business adoption of nature-based solutions”
APE contributed to session 10 of the European Business & Nature Summit 2023 on “Harnessing nature’s potential: Exploring business adoption of nature-based solutions”, which was held in Milan on 11 and 12 October.

Aqua Publica Europea was invited to contribute to session 10 of the European Business & Nature Summit 2023 on “Harnessing nature’s potential: Exploring business adoption of nature-based solutions”, which was held in Milan on 11 and 12 October.
The session was the opportunity to learn more about the potential of nature-based solutions (NBS) to address many water-related issues and to discuss the conditions for a private sector’s contribution to the financing of NBS.
As Aqua Publica Europea, we reiterated our persuasion that NBS can represent a valid alternative to traditional ‘grey solutions’ as discussed on occasion of a seminar that we organised some time ago.
Compared to grey solutions, NBS have indeed the potential to be more cost-effective, more resilient, and more environmentally friendly (including for a significant reduction of CO2 emissions). There remain three main obstacles to greater uptake of NBS by water operators:
- Full integration of NBS-related methodologies in the ‘toolbox’ of water utilities.
- Availability of robust metrics to assess the effectiveness (both in economic and environmental terms) of NBS compared to traditional solutions.
- Above all, the establishment of conducive governance frameworks, as the realisation of NBS necessarily depends on the coordination of different stakeholders and different public administration’s departments.