Investment Origination, Capacity Building & Regenerative Infrastructure
- Client: European Commission (NetworkNature+ Consortium)
- Region: Europe
- Period: 2023–2027
- Category: Investment Origination, Capacity Building & Regenerative Infrastructure
- Role: Methodology Design, Capacity Building, Thought Leadership, Bootcamp Development
- Focus Areas: Regenerative Infrastructure, Nature-Based Solutions, Climate Adaptation, Biodiversity, Water Resilience
- Strategic Objective: Enable cities and regions to design and finance transformational regenerative infrastructure systems
- Methodology: Mission-Driven Investment Planning, Systems Thinking, Regenerative Design, Investment Origination
- Target Audience: Local and Regional Governments, Infrastructure Planners, Utilities, Project Developers, Investors
- Key Innovation: Transitioning from project-based planning to mission-driven investment portfolios
- Flagship Activity: Mission-Driven Investment Planning Bootcamps, 4 taking place throghout Europe (Milán, Bari, Dortmund)
- Expected Legacy: A replicable framework for scaling regenerative infrastructure investments across Europe
The Challenge
Across Europe, cities and regions are facing increasingly interconnected challenges related to climate adaptation, biodiversity loss, water security, ageing infrastructure, economic competitiveness, public health, and social cohesion. They are also at the forefront of delivering the European Green Deal, the Biodiversity Strategy, the Climate Adaptation Strategy, the EU Missions, and other ambitious policy commitments. Yet translating these ambitions into investable projects and coordinated investment programmes remains a major challenge.
While Nature-based Solutions are increasingly recognised as part of the solution, many planning and investment processes remain fragmented, organised around individual sectors, projects, and funding streams. Infrastructure decisions are often taken independently from ecosystem restoration efforts, climate adaptation strategies, and economic development objectives.
As a result, public authorities frequently struggle to translate ambitious climate and biodiversity commitments into investable projects and coordinated investment programmes capable of delivering systemic impact.
The challenge is therefore not only how to implement more Nature-based Solutions, but how to rethink strategic investment planning and redesign infrastructure systems so that natural, built, social, institutional, and financial assets work together to deliver multiple outcomes simultaneously.
Our Contribution
As part of the European Commission-funded NetworkNature+ consortium, Altamira leads the development of a pioneering capacity-building programme designed to help cities, regions, infrastructure professionals, and public authorities rethink how infrastructure investments are originated, planned, financed, and delivered.
The programme supports a fundamental transition:
From fragmented projects and siloed planning toward regenerative infrastructure systems designed around shared societal missions.
Altamira is responsible for designing the conceptual framework, methodology, learning architecture, bootcamp programme, and practical tools that enable participants to move from long-term vision to implementation and investment.
The work forms part of the European Commission's broader effort to accelerate the uptake of Nature-based Solutions while strengthening the role of ecosystems as critical infrastructure networks within climate-resilient and nature-positive development pathways.
Rethinking Infrastructure
A central premise of the programme is that ecosystems should not be viewed solely as environmental assets.
Healthy watersheds, wetlands, forests, soils, urban green networks, water infrastructure, transport systems, governance institutions, and financial mechanisms all interact to shape resilience outcomes.
The programme therefore encourages participants to move beyond project-level thinking and towards the design of regenerative infrastructure systems capable of generating environmental, social, and economic value simultaneously.
Nature-based Solutions play a critical role within these systems, but they are understood as part of a broader portfolio of interventions that together strengthen resilience, restore ecosystems, improve quality of life, and support long-term prosperity.
The Mission-Driven Investment Planning Approach
The programme introduces a mission-driven investment planning methodology that helps cities and regions move beyond fragmented planning and project-by-project decision-making.
A distinctive feature of the programme is its focus on investment origination and market creation. Participants explore how public authorities, investors, utilities, developers, entrepreneurs, and Nature-based Enterprises can collaborate to develop investable projects, strengthen business cases, and mobilise funding and financing at scale.
The approach combines systems thinking, regenerative design, institutional economics, infrastructure finance, and investment origination.
It helps participants "zoom out" to understand system dynamics and "zoom in" to structure viable investment opportunities.
Module 1 — UNDERSTANDING Systems and Breaking Silos
The first module focuses on building a shared understanding of system dynamics through systems analysis, group model building, strategic framing, and scenario exploration.
Participants identify interdependencies, trade-offs, leverage points, and institutional barriers across sectors.
Outputs
- Shared understanding of challenges and opportunities
- System maps
- Strategic alignment among stakeholders
Module 2 — PLANNING Regenerative Futures
The second module enables participants to explore the regenerative potential of their city, watershed, landscape, or region.
Using foresight methods, regenerative design principles, and back-casting exercises, participants identify transformative opportunities and long-term development pathways.
Outputs
- Regenerative vision
- Investment opportunity clusters
- Strategic development pathways
Module 3 — FINANCING and Delivering Transformation: Building an Investment Pipeline
The third module translates strategic concepts into investment-ready portfolios.
Participants work on business case development, financing strategies, governance models, procurement approaches, and delivery mechanisms, including Public-Private Partnerships.
The module is supported by practical tools developed through Altamira's work on infrastructure finance, water security, climate adaptation, and mission-driven investment planning.
Outputs
- Investment briefs
- Conceptual business cases
- Financing pathways
- Procurement strategies
- Delivery models
Pilot Bootcamp: From Planning to Action
The first Mission-Driven Investment Planning Bootcamp was delivered in Milan in 2025 under the theme: "From Planning to Action: Building a Pipeline of Bankable Projects."
The three-day programme brought together 32 participants representing 14 nationalities, including urban planners, municipal leaders, climate finance experts, researchers, entrepreneurs, and Nature-based Solution practitioners.
Participants worked on real-world challenges and applied systems thinking, Theory of Change methodologies, project clustering techniques, financing frameworks, governance design tools, and investment planning approaches.
The bootcamp demonstrated how fragmented project ideas can be transformed into coherent, investable portfolios capable of attracting funding and financing while delivering multiple benefits across sectors.
Key insights included:
- Strong investment cases begin with a clear mission and Theory of Change.
- Nature-based Solutions become more impactful when integrated into broader regenerative infrastructure systems.
- Governance, funding, financing, procurement, and implementation models must be designed together.
- Blended finance requires institutional coordination and shared ownership, not only financial instruments.
- Private-sector participation extends far beyond financing and includes innovation, service provision, operations, maintenance, and outcome delivery.
Strategic Outcomes
The programme seeks to catalyse a broader shift in how infrastructure investments are conceived across Europe—from fragmented projects and sectoral budgets toward mission-driven investment portfolios capable of delivering multiple societal outcomes simultaneously.
Rather than treating Nature-based Solutions as stand-alone projects, the approach positions them as essential components of regenerative infrastructure systems capable of delivering climate resilience, biodiversity recovery, water security, social wellbeing, and economic prosperity.
By strengthening the capacity of cities, regions, utilities, planners, and infrastructure professionals, the initiative helps:
- Accelerate the deployment of Nature-based Solutions
- Strengthen regenerative infrastructure systems
- Improve investment readiness and project preparation
- Develop mission-driven investment portfolios
- Foster public-private collaboration
- Mobilise public, private, and blended finance
- Support climate resilience, biodiversity restoration, and water security outcomes
Why This Matters
Europe has entered a decade in which climate adaptation, biodiversity restoration, water security, and resilience are no longer optional policy objectives but strategic necessities.
Achieving these ambitions will require more than individual projects.
It will require new planning paradigms capable of aligning infrastructure, ecosystems, governance systems, and financial flows around shared missions and long-term outcomes.
Through NetworkNature+, Altamira is helping cities and regions develop the capabilities needed to originate, structure, and deliver these transformational investments.
The result is a practical pathway from vision to implementation—helping cities and regions transform climate and biodiversity ambitions into investable regenerative infrastructure systems that strengthen resilience, restore ecosystems, and create long-term value for people and place.
Expanding the Programme Across Europe
Building on the success of the Milan pilot, the programme is being expanded through a series of regional bootcamps designed to help cities and regions accelerate the development of regenerative infrastructure portfolios and Nature-based Solutions investment pipelines.
Confirmed and planned locations include:
- Milan, Italy (Pilot)
- (video impression: https://youtu.be/Zd7mmKr1oFg)
- Bari / Puglia, Italy
- Dortmund, Germany
- Additional European locations under development
