About us

NL2120 is a program in which science, business, nature organisations and education work together to gain knowledge about natural solutions (Nature-based Solutions) and to scale them up. We show how nature can be used as a solution to social issues, such as climate adaptation and use of space.

As one of the largest public-private collaborations in the field of Nature-based Solutions in the world, NL2120 works on gathering and scaling up knowledge, connecting theory and practice and drawing up feasible future perspectives. So that organisations, including governments, water boards, provinces, (construction) companies and ultimately individual citizens, know how to put natural solutions into practice.

Working with nature

In the Netherlands it is already easy to see on a local scale that you can work with, rather than against nature, to find solutions to major social issues. For example, we are building a beautiful, biodiverse landscape in the river area, where we are simultaneously restoring the floodplain nature during sand extraction. There are also examples on the coast, such as the Sand Motor, where earning capacity and nature go hand in hand. In cities you increasingly see natural buffers being integrated into projects to prevent heat stress in the city.

The deployment of natural solutions is still often limited to small pilot projects. But if nature, biodiversity restoration and earning power can go hand in hand, why not choose to scale up? What stands in our way and what is needed? What barriers do we still need to overcome? And what opportunities are there? That is precisely the mission of NL2120.

Our approach