Raising interests in 'nature-based solutions' (NBS) inspired attempts to organise their principles and qualities within comprehensive and internally consistent evaluation frameworks, so as to demonstrate the superior performance of 'working with nature'. However, the proposed frameworks stop short of taking into account the changing conditions in which NBS are set to operate. Climate change, in particular, can alter ecosystems and their services, and may undermine the performance of green solutions that rely on these. We present here a 'dynamic' assessment framework explicitly accounting for the impact of climate change on the effectiveness of the proposed NBS. The framework is based on an innovative approach integrating system analysis and backcasting. Although it has not yet applied within the NBS context, backcasting is well-suited to seize the transformational character of NBS, as it encourages 'breakthrough' leaps rather than incremental improvements. Our framework factors in NBS' multifunctional character and is designed to capture associated direct benefits/costs and co-benefits/costs. It is meant to be applied ex ante to ideally support the choice between innovative NBS and traditional options, in an effort to respond to the societal challenges identified by the EU Research & Innovation agenda on the environment.

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