NaTour4CChange held its first Pilot Destination Exchange Workshop on 19 September 2025.
Led by project partner IUCN Med, the event gathered representatives from six Mediterranean pilot destinations to exchange updates on their Destination Climate Action Plans and to explore how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can address the dual challenges of climate change and sustainable tourism.
Sharing Local Climate Action Plans
All pilot destinations in the project presented the current status of their Climate Action Plans. While contexts varied, common climate threats emerged across Cabo de Gata (Spain), Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (France), Capo Carbonara (Italy), Dugi Otok (Croatia), Sitia (Greece), and Hutovo Blato (Bonia & Herzegovina). Some of them shared being concerned with rising temperatures, coastal degradation and erosion, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss impacting tourism assets.
Stakeholders emphasised the need to strengthen governance, improve stakeholder engagement, and secure long-term funding to ensure action plans move from design to action.
Peer Review and Common Challenges
Through a peer-review exercise led by Plan Bleu, shared processes and challenges were identified for enhancing the resilience of pilot destinations to the climate-related issues they face:
- Shared action pathways: dune and seagrass restoration, water management, visitor flow regulation, and participatory monitoring
- Challenges: fragmented governance, limited funding, uneven prioritisation of actions, and gaps in monitoring data
Introducing the Nature-based Solutions Design Tool
To support the destinations, IUCN Med and NBS Climate presented an NbS design tracker, a step-by-step tool aligned with the IUCN Global Standard for NbS. It will help guide pilot sites through the first steps in the identification of NbS solutions addressing their main climate-related challenges. The tool wil allow sites to track and document their efforts to identify the scope of their action and prioritise NbS to be supported based on their potential. 
Looking Ahead
The next virtual workshop is planned for November, focusing on the identification and prioritisation of NbS and their feasibility assessments. An in-person workshop is planned at the beginning of 2026 to further advance on NbS design, implementation strategies, and destination communication plans.
