CONTEXT: Highly water-dependent agri-food systems are impacted by external shocks, revealing their vulnerabilities and stressing the need to transform them towards increased sustainability and resilience. Various disciplines and scholars highlight the role of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in addressing societal challenges while creating sustainable and resilient contexts. OBJECTIVE: In steering transformative processes, participation is vital as a governance variable. However, motivating stakeholders' engagement with NbS uptake in decision-making requires evidence proving its potential to effectively address their direct and indirect environmental, societal, and economic concerns. This review systematically analyzed the potential of Citizen Science (CS) to overcome the barriers to NbS adoption and to drive stakeholders' attitudes towards sustainability. METHODS: Focused on water as an essential for the agri-food system, 46 articles were systematically analyzed to examine water-related NbS, locate relevant drivers and barriers of NbS and ecosystem services, including associated advantages and disadvantages. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Current research focuses heavily on NbS that benefit people, often overlooking the broader environmental benefits. While a trend towards using NbS for extreme weather events is evident, other critical areas like irrigation, groundwater management, food security, and water sanitation (WASH) need more attention. These elements are vital for sustainable and resilient agri-food systems. The literature identifies three central challenges to implementing NbS: knowledge gaps, participation, and funding. Novel participatory research methods like CS could prove pivotal in addressing NbS adoption barriers. CS in NbS can enhance engagement through improved and informed stakeholder participation while ensuring cost-effective and transparent processes of monitoring and evaluating potential success. Although NbS are gaining traction, scopes and scales of implementation must be more inclusive of various stakeholders and ecological services for the broader environment. SIGNIFICANCE: CS in NbS can promote sustainable attitudes within the individuals of the society, and by design, NbS provides a sustainable context. Upon proper alignment, CS-NbS can increase the harmony between human and natural systems, shedding light on the Resource Nexus cycle and ultimately causing a visible change in behavior within the engaged stakeholder network. This approach values and amplifies notions of inclusiveness and the incorporation of local knowledge. Living labs and mixed-method research in CS-NbS can initiate inter and transdisciplinarity, collaborative learning, knowledge sharing, and enhanced participation in decision-making while unlocking the transformative capacities of NbS and strengthening the science-policy-society interface.