2024 was a fruitful year for REST-COAST and it ended just as successfully, as new research conducted by the Deltares team, as part of the REST-COAST project, was published in December 2024. The paper, "Money talks. A systems perspective on funding and financing barriers to nature-based solutions," explores the challenges in scaling up Nature-based Solutions (NbS) due to funding and financing gaps.

Available in the Nature-Based Solutions journal, the study identifies key barriers, such as:

• The difficulty of securing funding throughout a project’s lifecycle.
• Institutional misalignments affecting funder and financier preferences.
• The persistent role of opportunity costs and complex cost structures.

The findings of the research emphasise that overcoming these barriers requires systemic, multi-level approaches, as many challenges lie beyond individual projects’ control.

By bridging these gaps, we can unlock the full potential of NbS to address environmental and societal needs. Read the full publication here.