People cannot survive without the many benefits that nature provides through natural processes such as capturing energy from the sun, decomposing waste, storing carbon, recycling nutrients and achieving food security, water quantity and quality and climate regulation.
While we have long recognised the value of goods and services from nature, nature continues to be over-exploited and over-harvested for food, fuel and other materials.
Nature’s many contributions to people are increasingly recognised as the basis for protecting and restoring ecosystems. As our understanding of how and where biodiverse, complex ecosystems provide critical and life-enhancing services improves, we are changing how we use nature.
Nature-based solutions provide, maintain or enhance services delivered by nature to deliver benefits to human wellbeing while also addressing the climate and biodiversity crises. These are solutions to challenges like reducing coastal erosion, providing clean water, reducing flood risk and achieving sustainable food production.
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Working with nature to develop solutions can deliver sustainable climate action to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and enable people to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change.
Restoring native forests in appropriate places is an example of a nature-based solution that can deliver climate, biodiversity, social and economic benefits simultaneously.
Planting forests in places where they replace a more diverse ecosystem is not a nature-based solution because it is harmful to biodiversity.
Different nature-based solutions provide different mixes of social, economic and biodiversity benefits, just like building a bypass around a town might provide different social and economic benefits to different groups of people. Some people benefit and others may face a cost through lost opportunities for income or a change in the services provided to them. Careful planning and monitoring of nature-based solutions can reduce the risk of negative outcomes, mitigate risks and help us to learn how to better implement them in the future or in other locations.
Nature’s many contributions to people are increasingly recognised as the basis for protecting and restoring ecosystems
Imagine if we designed and built 50 water-treatment plants to provide clean water to people, but once they were built no one monitored the water or maintained the equipment. While we might expect that a natural ecosystem would fare better than a water treatment plant if left to its own devices, even nature-based solutions need to be monitored and managed.
The Connecting Nature project measured the impact of nature-based projects in cities on climate change adaptation, health and wellbeing, social cohesion and sustainable economic development across Europe. This project demonstrated the great potential for job creation and economic benefits from the deployment and ongoing management of nature-based solutions.
Natural ecosystems are far more complex than the “grey infrastructure” that we normally put in place to manage the supply of water or prevent coastal erosion. Nature-based solutions change over time. If well managed, they can increase in complexity and even improve as the ecosystem develops.
A biodiverse nature-based solution can adapt to changing conditions, with different species thriving in different kinds of situations. For example, a diverse grassland can better withstand drought conditions than a grassland with just a few species, because the chances of having a drought-resistant species in the mix is higher when you have many species.
There are challenges involved in deploying nature-based solutions more widely. There is currently a lack of ability to learn from solutions that are already in place. Many nature-based solutions have already been used in Ireland, from green walls and sustainable urban drainage systems in cities to multi-species pastures, coastal defences and restored forests.
However, most of these are not adequately mapped, documented and monitored. We are therefore losing opportunities to learn from what we already have.
The Slowaters project uses nature-based solutions to reduce flood risk for small and medium flood events, with benefits for biodiversity and ecosystems. This project is learning how slowing or storing flood water using restoration of rivers or placing tree branches or whole trunks in river channels can be of benefit for flood reduction and biodiversity.
Harnessing the multiple benefits of nature-based solutions will require investment in green infrastructure, skills and a commitment to monitoring so we can learn how to work effectively with nature rather than against it.
Yvonne Buckley is an ecologist and professor of zoology at Trinity College Dublin