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The European Union quickly incorporated the concept of nature based-solutions (NBS), becoming a key promotor. This was achieved through financial support for both academic research and city implementations. Still, the processes of institutionalization are yet to be fully explored. This study aims at assessing how the scientific literature regarding NBS is addressing institutional aspects and how it is constructing the NBS narrative. This research is divided into two stages. First, it undertakes a quantitative analysis of the discourse, considering a set of preselected search terms organized into five categories: Actor, institutional, planning, policy, and regulation. Second, it adopts a qualitative analysis considering both a group of the most cited articles and of articles highlighted in the previous stage. The results indicate that the NBS concept is still shadowed by other environmental concepts such as ecosystem services. Despite being an issue promoted at the European level, the results of this exercise express the lack of concrete planning and policy recommendations, reflected by the absence of terms such as “planning objectives”. This pattern occurs in all other major categories, being the institutional category the least mentioned of all five categories. The results highlight the need to address both policies and planning recommendations more concretely, studying the institutional arrangements able to promote NBS.

The food system is increasingly acknowledged as the single largest reason for humans' transgression of key planetary limits and it is gaining centrality in our societal run-up towards a sustainable future, especially at city level. In Portugal, a country characterized by high meat and fish consumption, noticeable food wastage, and high urbanization level, fully understanding and then transforming the food system is of priority. Here we investigate the significance of food in comparison to other daily anthropogenic demands and the current sourcing and resource intensities profiles of dietary patterns at Portuguese national and city level through Ecological Footprint Accounting. A critical assessment of gaps in national and local food policies to trigger a major transformation in the Portuguese food system is also conducted on the basis of a newly proposed analytical framework. Results show that food consumption in Portugal is the single largest reason (≈30%) for transgressing the carrying capacity of Earth ecosystems but, despite the urgent need for changes in Portuguese food systems, major deficiencies in local policy implementation exist with weak policy commitment, coordination, and lacking institutional capacity as food policies – especially at the local level – are still not prioritized. Similarities with other countries within Europe and their implications are also discussed.

Portugal is working on the reform of its local government. Although amalgamation was one of the recommended strategies, as a consequence of the European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout process, an alternative approach has been suggested. This reform is mostly a development of inter-municipal cooperation mechanisms combined with partial devolution strategies. However, as the bailout agreement was its main catalyst, the urgency to cut public administration costs required in the memorandum and the imposed deadlines gave a perverse incentive for central government to produce ad hoc and fragmented modifications. I argue that these political and economical demands, which sanctioned the argument for rushed measures, together with the country's strong local identities, historical municipalism, political centralism and the political costs of significant territorial changes, can explain the absence of a comprehensible reform strategy and the singularities of its policies. This article explores the framework that justifies the reform and assesses the impacts of the bailout agreement.

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