Mission-Driven Investment Planning for Regeneration – NetworkNature Plus

Led development of a capacity-building programme to enable cities and regions to design and finance bankable Nature-based Solutions pipelines at scale.

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.

Cities are expected to deliver on European Green Deal, Biodiversity Strategy, Climate Adaptation Strategy, and EU Missions commitments, yet translating these ambitions into investable projects and coordinated programmes remains difficult. Nature-based Solutions are increasingly recognised as part of the answer, but planning processes remain fragmented, and infrastructure decisions are too often taken independently from ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation, and economic development.

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 the transition from fragmented projects and siloed planning toward regenerative infrastructure systems designed around shared societal missions. Altamira is responsible for designing the conceptual framework and methodology, creating the learning architecture and bootcamp programme, and developing practical tools that enable movement from vision to implementation and investment.

This work supports the European Commission’s broader effort to accelerate Nature-based Solutions uptake while strengthening ecosystems’ role as critical infrastructure within climate-resilient 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 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, with Nature-based Solutions 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 methodology helps cities move beyond fragmented planning and project-by-project decision-making. It focuses on investment origination and market creation, explores collaboration among public authorities, investors, utilities, developers, entrepreneurs, and Nature-based Enterprises, develops investable projects, strengthens business cases, and mobilises 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, resulting in a shared understanding of challenges and opportunities, system maps, and 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, producing a regenerative vision, investment opportunity clusters, and strategic development pathways.

Module 3: Financing and delivering transformation

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, supported by practical tools developed through Altamira’s work on infrastructure finance, water security, climate adaptation, and mission-driven investment planning. Outputs include investment briefs, conceptual business cases, financing pathways, procurement strategies, and 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 from the pilot:

• 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, including 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.

Capacity strengthening under the programme 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: 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, a practical pathway from vision to implementation that helps turn climate and biodiversity ambitions into investable regenerative infrastructure systems.

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 (pilot), Bari and Puglia, and Dortmund, with additional European locations under development.