This deliverable introduces the CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) 18349:2026, Nature-based Insurance and Investments - Guidance on Performance and Design Criteria, which was sponsored by the NATURANCE project, formally approved through the CEN Workshop process coordinated and supervised by UNI - Ente Italiano di Normazione, the Italian national standardisation body. The CWA represents one of the flagship outcomes of NATURANCE and provides the first European guidance specifically dedicated to nature-based insurance and investment solutions. The CWA addresses a critical gap in the market for Nature-based Solutions (NbS). While several international and European frameworks provide guidance on the environmental quality and sustainability of NbS, they do not adequately address the requirements of insurers, investors, and financial actors. The CWA therefore establishes a common framework that helps determine when ecosystem restoration and protection measures are sufficiently material to support underwriting, investment, and financing decisions. It aims to create greater transparency, comparability, and confidence in nature-based insurance and investment solutions by defining shared design principles and performance metrics. The CWA is structured around two complementary components. - The first consists of five guiding design principles, which establish the conditions that nature-based insurance and investment solutions should meet: (1) economic soundness, (2) financial viability, (3) environmental integrity, (4) social value and ethical practice, and (5) governance, data, and assurance. These principles create a level playing field for developers, investors, insurers, public authorities, and communities by defining what constitutes a credible and high-quality solution and the evidence required to support related claims. - The second component introduces a shared framework of performance metrics designed to support monitoring, reporting, verification, underwriting, investment appraisal, and public decision-making. The metrics cover economic, financial, environmental, social, and governance dimensions and are intended to demonstrate both financial materiality and impact materiality. Together, the principles and metrics provide a practical basis for assessing whether a nature-based intervention or financial mechanism can credibly reduce climate risks while generating environmental and social benefits. The CWA contributes to ongoing efforts to close both the adaptation financing gap and the financial protection gap by enabling innovative insurance and investment approaches that harness the risk-reducing benefits of ecosystems. It supports insurers, investors, public authorities, project developers, and other stakeholders in designing and evaluating solutions that combine climate resilience, ecosystem restoration, and sustainable finance. To facilitate communication, dissemination, and practical uptake of the CWA, the main concepts, principles, and metrics have been translated into a series of graphical illustrations and visual cards developed by NATURANCE Work Package 5. These visual materials are intended to make the guidance more accessible to practitioners, policymakers, insurers, investors, and other stakeholders. The deliverable therefore combines these dissemination-oriented graphical materials with the formally adopted text of the CEN Workshop Agreement, which is reproduced in full in the Annex.
Myšiak et al. (Mon,) studied this question.