Use of spatial information to remove barriers and to foster enablers of uptake of Nature Based Solutions for food production and water resource management in Ghana and the Netherlands

Urban Farm DB summary

With water-related problems from climate change threatening the future of food systems in both the Netherlands and Ghana, this comparative case study analyzed rainwater harvesting and wastewater reuse in the Rhine-Scheldt Estuaries (Netherlands) and the Bono East Region (Ghana). The analysis focused on identifying similarities in how experts and stakeholders use spatial information to remove barriers to, or foster enablers of, the uptake of nature-based solutions (NbS) in view of climate change. Both rainwater harvesting and wastewater treatment techniques were found to be available and ready for adoption by farmers and the food processing industry, but their uptake was hampered by multiple barriers ranging from biophysical and technical to social and institutional. Spatial information was concluded to be a potential enabler for NbS adoption if applicable to a wide range of possible solutions for water scarcity in food production, though both case studies showed difficulty making the future spatially explicit, and in both cases the effect on biodiversity of, respectively, effluent water reuse and rainwater harvesting did not play a direct role in stakeholder dialogue.