Principles for delivering urban Nature-based Solutions

Unsustainable exploitation of our natural capital is at the heart of the greatest threats to humanity globally. This includes driving climate change, biodiversity decline, and even increased risk of pandemics. Nature-based solutions represent a paradigm shift in how we protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural capital assets. Nature-based solution approaches to landscape management represent an exciting opportunity to protect biodiversity whilst delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits. This includes helping to build more resilient urban communities and industries in the face of climate change.

Global challenges facing humanity juxtaposed against the ecosystem services that can be delivered through a nature-based solution approach.

The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) are taking a lead in promoting urban nature-based solutions. Their organisational mission is to improve the sustainability of the built environment, by transforming the way it is planned, designed, constructed, maintained and operated. Engaging with built environment stakeholders, UKGBC provide a supporting role in terms of developing resources and knowledge exchange platforms that promote shifts towards more sustainable development. Their latest programme, Increasing Nature-based Solutions, aims to support industry in setting more ambitious targets and increasing the application of nature-based solutions in urban areas for climate resilience and environmental net gains.

A key component of this programme is launched today: the Principles for delivering urban Nature-based Solutions report. This guidance has been produced to help developers, building owners and managers increase the incorporation of NBS within the construction and operation of built assets. As a member of the EU Horizon 2020 project Connecting Nature, I was invited to be on the steering panel for the development of this publication. Along with a selection of nature-based solution experts from industry, public administration, and non-governmental organisations, we were tasked with developing a framework that would help developers, owners, operators, and occupiers to design, deliver, and operate their assets in such a way that improves climate resilience and environmental impact.

Twelve months on, and several iterations in the making, during a time of unprecedented upheaval and change in global priorities, I think the final product produced by the UKGBC represents a usable and comprehensive range of initiatives, policies, commitments, and tools to support their aims. In such a rapidly emerging and evolving discipline, the report represents a timely portfolio of resources underpinning six principles for delivering urban nature-based solutions: Define ambitions; Assess risks, baselines, and impacts; Maximise multifunctionality; Identify value, costs, benefits, and funding; Create long-term management plans; and Collaborate, educate, and innovate.

Six principles for delivering urban nature-based solutions from the UKGBC report

By breaking nature-based solution implementation into these bite-sized components, the report should represent actionable support for sustainability professionals and infrastructure managers to understand the drivers behind, and the mechanisms for, institutional change in relation to mainstreaming nature-based solutions, climate resilience, and environmental net gain. Ultimately, the hope is that it will drive an increase in the application of NBS, both wild and cultivated, in urban areas. I am very pleased to see that, along with the other key resources presented in the guide, the value of outputs from the Connecting Nature project were recognised and embedded throughout. This includes the Connecting Nature Framework, as a complementary and parallel supporting process, and other innovations from within the project that sit within and complement the CN Framework. For example, the Nature-based Enterprise Platform, NBS Business Model Canvas, Technical Solutions Guide to incorporating locally-contextualised biodiversity benefits, and the Environmental Evaluation Indicators Review.

UK conservation priority bumblebee foraging on formal landscaping in an urban setting thanks to locally-contextualised habitat design.

The production of the guide certainly was a a multidisciplinary and collaborative endeavour and, because of the concerted effort to engage with industry practitioners throughout the development process, I hope it proves to be a valuable resource for those towards which it is targeted.

Advertisement

By Stuart Connop