NBS to Regenerate Po Plain Rural Landscapes: a Multi-Scale and Multi-Stakeholder Approach

lntensively and conventionally managed agricultural land suffers from ecosystems degradation and loss, and consequent widespread Ecosystem Disservices. The recent trend of converting uncultivated areas in industrial-logistic clusters has severely exacerbated these issues. Nonetheless, both agricultural and industriai areas can be design opportunities for rebalancing the impacts of current territorial mono-functionality. Nature-based Solutions {NbSs) represent a viable approach to address these issues both at site level - meeting the needs of agricultural and industriai operators - and at landscape scale. A coherent NbSs implementation, able to effectively convert current negative externalities into positive ones, requires: 1. context-specific multi-scale knowledge on the "health status" of the structural and functional components of the landscape; 2. suitable scientific tools; 3. matching the needs of locai stakeholders {who are the direct and indirect drivers of change) and the landscape needs, through knowledge sharing (science-practice cooperation). These steps are pivotal for: correctly implementing NbSs; making NbSs contributions recognized; effectively and sustainably engaging stakeholders {ESE). Based on these premises, we present some scientific-practical experiences of NbSs implementation in the Po Plain context {Northern ltaly), a highly impacted productive district. AII experiences relate to over-simplified agricultural landscapes and are based on multidisciplinary and multi-scale scientific assessments and design approaches focused on landscape ecology principles, landscape bionomy, floristic-vegetational and soil studies, socio-cultura! analyses. Science-to-practice participatory approaches involve three different stakeholders: farmers and farmers' associations; logistics-industry operators (compensatory and mitigation measures); 3. citizens and cultura! associations. The applied methodology includes 5 steps: 1. Multiscale landscape ecologica! assessments (macro, meso and site scales ecologica! anamnesis, identification of the main drivers of Vulnerability and Resilience, also through targeted indicators and Ecosystem Services matrices); 2. macro-scale planning strategies identification, meso-scale prescriptions {Green and Blue lnfrastructures approach) 3. Site-scale cc-design of corrective interventions {NbS approach); 4. implementation of interventions, also through participatory approaches directly involving citizens, which are made aware of NbSs role; 5. post-intervention monitoring of step 1 indicators and Ecosystem Services, also through Citizen Science approaches, to outline locai and regional impacts of NbSs.