New insights from four NATURANCE Innovation Labs show how risk transfer and nature-based solutions can work hand in hand to address escalating climate risks. From flood resilience in the UK and Italy to wildfire and urban heat challenges across Europe, the brief highlights practical opportunities to scale NbS where they are needed most.

This brief is part of a NATURANCE series for policymakers and finance professionals, exploring how nature-based solutions (NbS) can be integrated into insurance and investment. Drawing on four Innovation Labs, it examines how risk transfer and NbS can support each other and highlights opportunities across flood resilience in the UK and Italy, wildfire risk, and urban heat in Europe.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) use natural processes to address risks like flooding, wildfires, and urban heat while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits. Risk transfer can improve their financial viability, while NbS can enhance the sustainability of these mechanisms by reducing risk.

The IIASA NATURANCE team from the Equity and Justice (EQU) Research Group in the Population and Just Societies (POPJUS) Program is leading Work Package 3 which will analyse governance, policy and market/business enablers and barriers of innovative and equitable nature-based insurance and investment solutions and identify good practice and policy reforms for unlocking the business potential of NbS and scaling up.

NATURANCE © NATURANCE

This brief is part of a NATURANCE series for policymakers and finance professionals, exploring how nature-based solutions (NbS) can be integrated into insurance and investment. Drawing on four Innovation Labs, it examines how risk transfer and NbS can support each other and highlights opportunities across flood resilience in the UK and Italy, wildfire risk, and urban heat in Europe.

News

WADE

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World Aging Data Explorer (WADE) on UNESCO’s Digital Innovation Hub

Developed by Sergei Schebov at IIASA’s Population and Just Societies Program (POPJUS), the World Aging Data Explorer (WADE) is featured on UNESCO’s Digital Innovation Hub.
Immigration

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More than numbers: first global dataset shows who is immigrating

As countries compete for skilled workers and grapple with aging populations and labor shortages, understanding who is moving across borders is increasingly important. A new study provides the first global dataset of immigration composition disaggregated simultaneously by age, sex, and educational attainment, offering a new basis for tracking brain gain and brain drain and improving population projections.
Dreamstime_46805852

12 August 2026

Planning for the future through a population lens

IIASA researcher suggests a fundamentally different way for governments to plan for the future: using population as a common framework to connect health, education, food, jobs, housing, social protection, and climate risk. The approach integrates demographic data with sectoral planning to help governments make more coordinated, evidence-based decisions and improve population wellbeing.