Collaborating for impact:
A roadmap for a nature-positive European built environment
EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF GREEN ROOF AND LIVING WALL ASSOCIATIONS (EFB)
Developing a shared European vision and actionable pathways for scaling green roofs, living walls and nature-based solutions
“Roadmapping gave us an opportunity to bring together people who are interested in the success of the sector, develop a shared vision and, through the involvement of experts, take a closer look at the challenges we face. It helped us move from general ideas and shared ambitions to concrete steps towards achieving our goals.”
Paulo Palha, President of the European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB), President of the Portuguese Green Roofs National Association (ANCV)
Developing a shared European vision and actionable pathways for scaling green roofs, living walls and nature-based solutions
“Roadmapping gave us an opportunity to bring together people who are interested in the success of the sector, develop a shared vision and, through the involvement of experts, take a closer look at the challenges we face. It helped us move from general ideas and shared ambitions to concrete steps towards achieving our goals.”
Paulo Palha, President of the European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB), President of the Portuguese Green Roofs National Association (ANCV)
The challenge
The European built environment has a major role to play in the transition towards a Nature-Positive Economy. Green roofs, living walls and wider green and blue infrastructure can contribute to biodiversity, climate adaptation, ecosystem services, human wellbeing and more resilient cities.
However, scaling these solutions across Europe is not simply a question of technical capability. The sector operates across different national regulatory systems, standards, markets, financing arrangements, professional practices and levels of public awareness. The challenge for the European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB) was therefore to develop a shared direction for the sector while recognising the diversity of national and local contexts.
EFB brings together national associations and a wide community of companies, organisations and experts working across the green roof and living wall sector. It operates at the interface between policy, research and practice, providing a platform for sharing standards, good practice and innovation across Europe. For the European roadmap developed through EU funded GoNaturePositive! project, EFB was supported by the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP).
The challenge was particularly complex because the barriers to scaling nature-positive solutions were interconnected. The eventual roadmap identified fragmentation across policy, standards, finance and skills as a major barrier to wider adoption, alongside issues including investor confidence, unclear returns on investment, skills gaps, uneven social acceptance and risks around inconsistent quality and greenwashing.
“Europe has many of the ingredients needed for nature-positive buildings — expertise, technologies, businesses, standards, research and policy initiatives — but they are fragmented. Roadmapping created a forum in which these different parts of the ecosystem could see their interdependencies and work collaboratively towards a shared European direction.”
Dr Dharm Kapletia, Trinity College Dublin and GoNaturePositive! project
Why roadmapping?
EFB needed more than a collection of individual opinions or a list of potential actions. It needed a way of bringing different parts of the ecosystem together to establish:
• a common long-term ambition;
• a shared understanding of the barriers preventing progress;
• priorities for action;
• clarity about the roles of different stakeholders; and
• practical pathways showing what needs to happen, and when
Strategic roadmapping provided a structured way to move from a long-term vision to concrete priorities and implementation pathways.
The approach was particularly suited to a challenge where no single organisation has the authority or capability to deliver the transition alone. By bringing different stakeholder perspectives into the same process, the workshops enabled participants to consider the relationships between policy, finance, business, technology, skills, standards and societal change rather than addressing each in isolation.
Bringing the European ecosystem together
The roadmapping process involved more than 50 participants across eight stakeholder groups:
• policymakers;
• businesses;
• nature-based enterprises;
• finance and investors;
• environmental organisations and NGOs;
• citizens and communities;
• R&D and academia; and
• standards bodies.
The process was commissioned by Trinity College Dublin as the lead institute on the GoNaturePositive! project and facilitated by the IfM Engage team, which involved plenary discussion, breakout groups and prioritisation exercises. It was delivered through two workshops comprising four sessions between November and December 2025: a visioning session followed by baseline and pathways sessions.
The process deliberately brought stakeholders with different interests and perspectives into the same conversation. Rather than beginning with a predetermined set of projects or technologies, participants first explored the future they wanted to create.
This resulted in a shared 2050 vision of a circular, nature-positive built environment in which cities and buildings function as living ecosystems, with nature integrated into urban planning, investment and design decisions. Regenerative design, circular materials and green technologies would become normal practice, while standards would provide quality, safety and long-term resilience.
From ambition to priorities
The workshops then moved from the desired future to the current situation.
Participants identified the barriers preventing the vision from being realised and explored potential responses across policy, finance, business, technology and social change. Priorities were selected through facilitated clustering and voting before being developed further into potential initiatives.
This helped move the discussion away from a general ambition to a much more focused question:
What needs to change to make the desired future possible?
The resulting roadmap identified a number of interconnected areas for action, including:
• Establishing common standards and metrics
A major priority was greater harmonisation of approaches across Europe, including common standards and measurable performance criteria capable of demonstrating the contribution of green infrastructure to biodiversity and wider ecosystem services.
• Developing new approaches to finance
Participants identified the need for financing mechanisms linked to measurable outcomes, alongside greater investor confidence and clearer understanding of the economic value and return on investment associated with nature-positive infrastructure.
• Building local and circular supply chains
The roadmap identified opportunities to develop local, low-carbon materials and supply chains, alongside regenerative design and circular approaches.
• Making access to green infrastructure more equitable
Participants recognised that nature-positive urban development should not become a benefit available only to wealthier areas or communities. The roadmap therefore includes ambitions around access to green infrastructure in social housing, schools, healthcare facilities and climate-exposed neighbourhoods.
• Developing skills and professional capability
A further pathway focused on developing a skilled European workforce capable of designing, installing, maintaining and monitoring high-quality green roofs, living walls and wider nature-positive building systems. The roadmap envisages a harmonised European training framework and recognised professional competencies.
Turning priorities into pathways
A particularly important feature of the process was the move from broad priorities to structured pathways.
Shortlisted initiatives were developed through further breakout work, considering their desired end state, current situation, stakeholders, scope, milestones, indicators, activities, resources, skills, partnerships, risks and mitigation.
This helped ensure that the roadmap was not simply a statement of ambition. It began to answer the practical questions of what needs to happen, who needs to be involved and what conditions need to be in place.
The roadmap therefore includes milestones extending across 2027, 2030 and 2050, providing both near-term actions and a longer-term direction of travel.
“We realised that focusing on one possible solution alone will not transform the built environment. We need to work simultaneously on standards, financing, performance measurement, skills, market development and fair access to green infrastructure. It also shifted our focus more strongly towards implementation: defining who needs to act, what needs to change, and how progress can be measured.”
Pavel Dostal, Vice President of the European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB), Board Chairman of the Czech Green Roof and Living Wall Association (AZSF)
A roadmap owned by an ecosystem, not an organisation
One of the important features of the EFB process was that the workshops were not treated as the end of the exercise.
Following the facilitated workshops, EFB continued the discussion through internal EFB network activities and engagement with the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP). These activities helped refine and consolidate proposed pathways, solutions and action plans and broaden the range of challenges considered.
This was important because the transition identified by the roadmap cannot be delivered by EFB alone.
• Policy makers need to create enabling regulatory frameworks.
• Standards bodies need to support common approaches.
• Businesses need viable markets and supply chains.
• Finance needs credible investment propositions and evidence of value.
• Researchers need to develop knowledge and evidence.
• Professionals need appropriate skills.
• Cities and communities need solutions that deliver tangible benefits.
The roadmap therefore acts as a shared framework for coordinating action across the ecosystem.
What the process demonstrated
The EFB experience highlighted several lessons about using roadmapping to support complex sustainability transitions.
1. A shared vision creates a reference point for action
Starting with the desired 2050 future allowed participants to think beyond existing constraints and consider what the built environment could become.
2. The barriers are systemic
The workshops demonstrated that scaling green infrastructure cannot be addressed through technology or individual projects alone. Policy, finance, standards, skills, markets and social acceptance are interconnected.
3. Diversity of stakeholders improves the quality of the roadmap
Having different perspectives represented helped expose dependencies that might otherwise remain hidden. The final roadmap reflects this by combining interventions across policy, finance, business, technology and social change.
4. Prioritisation is essential
The roadmapping process provided a structured mechanism for moving from a very broad field of possible interventions towards a manageable set of priorities. This is particularly important when dealing with complex sustainability challenges where stakeholders can otherwise agree on the ambition but struggle to agree where to start.
5. A roadmap needs continuing ownership
The workshop process created the initial alignment, but subsequent engagement through EFB and ECTP was important for refining the pathways and developing ownership.
The final D2.2 reflection captures this particularly well: overcoming fragmentation across policy, finance and knowledge was identified both as the principal challenge and as a key lever for scaling nature-positive solutions.
Looking ahead
The EFB roadmap sets out an ambition to move green roofs, living walls and wider green infrastructure from optional or project-specific interventions towards essential components of Europe’s urban infrastructure.
Its significance extends beyond the green roof and living wall sector. The process demonstrates how strategic roadmapping can be used to address a complex, multi-actor transition where the required changes span regulation, finance, markets, technology, skills and social behaviour.
For EFB, the roadmap provides a basis for continuing collaboration across its European network and with wider stakeholders in the built environment.
For the wider GoNaturePositive! project, it provides an example of how a European sector ecosystem can move from a shared ambition, through identification of systemic barriers, towards coordinated pathways for action.
“The greatest value was bringing together perspectives that do not always meet around the same table. They all had their own motivation to join. Combining these perspectives helped us develop a more realistic and balanced Roadmap, with stronger potential for broad ownership and implementation.”
Tetiana Konchenko, General Secretary, European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB)
“The greatest value was bringing together perspectives that do not always meet around the same table. They all had their own motivation to join. Combining these perspectives helped us develop a more realistic and balanced Roadmap, with stronger potential for broad ownership and implementation.”
Tetiana Konchenko, General Secretary, European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB)
The roadmapping approach was developed within GoNaturePositive! and drew on strategic roadmapping expertise from IfM Engage, University of Cambridge. Across all of the project’s pilots, the methodology engaged more than 230 stakeholders across eight target groups, using a structured process to move from long-term visions to challenges, priorities, pathways and action plans.
The resulting pilot roadmaps can be viewed in the Deliverable 2.2 report on the GoNaturePositive! website and Zenodo.
About EFB
The European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations (EFB) is a non-profit European umbrella organisation founded in 1997, bringing together European national associations working to advance the greening of buildings and the integration of green infrastructure and nature-based solutions into the built environment. Today, EFB connects 20 national member associations across Europe, representing a wider network of around 1,600 small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as universities, research institutes, cities, public authorities, planners, architects and other stakeholders involved in green roofs, living walls and related technologies.
EFB promotes knowledge exchange, best practices, research and innovation, professional development, and cooperation across countries and climatic regions. It also contributes expertise to European and national policy, building regulations and standards, and works with European institutions, industry and research networks to strengthen the role of building-integrated nature-based solutions in climate adaptation, biodiversity, resilience and healthy urban development.
Within GoNaturePositive!, EFB led the European-level Green Buildings pilot, working with affiliated partners and the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) to explore pathways for integrating nature-positive approaches into the built environment.
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