What is a Nature Based Solution?

Nature-based Solutions are cost-effective solutions that provide benefits to the environment, economies, and communities.

they can reduce the impact of disasters
they can increase the resilience of people, assets and ecosystems
they can support communities to adapt to a changing climate.

How PPPs can benefit from Nature Based Solutions

Nature-based Solutions explore innovative implementation methods to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems – and are a fundamental tool for building better PPPs.

By leveraging the natural environment to protect vulnerable PPP infrastructure, we can mitigate risk which is a core focus of PPP implementation.

Instead of building massive man-made “protective’ infrastructure to protect communities, it is time that Nature Based Solutions are implemented and leveraged to protect the physical fabric of PPPs.

How can PPPs finance a Nature Based Solution?

PPPs can provide a vehicle to finance and scale up the implementation of Nature Based Solutions and promote the integration of Nature Based Solutions to enhance resilience of infrastructure at project identification. A strong financial case can be made that integrating Nature Based Solutions into the structuring of PPPs can help build project resilience and add to CapEx and OpEx savings over the full lifecycle of projects being planned. Saving money in the long-term will always be attractive to investors and politicians.

How can PPPs encourage Nature Based Solutions?

PPPs can provide an innovative vehicle to scale up development of critically needed resilient projects. Nature Based Solutions can be incorporated into planning, development and policy strategies.

What are the types of Nature Based Solutions?

Low human intervention

This type consists of no or minimal intervention in ecosystems.

Examples include:
– the protection of mangroves in coastal areas to limit risks associated to extreme weather conditions and to provide benefits and opportunities to local populations
– the establishment of marine protected areas to conserve biodiversity within these areas while exporting biomass into fishing grounds

Medium human intervention

This type of Nature-based Solution is strongly connected to concepts like natural systems agriculture, agro-ecology, and evolutionary-orientated forestry.

Examples include:
– innovative planning of agricultural landscapes to increase their multifunctionality
– enhancing tree species and genetic diversity to increase forest resilience to extreme events.

High human intervention

This type consists of managing ecosystems in very intrusive ways or even creating new ecosystems

Examples include:
– green and blue infrastructures
– restoration of heavily degraded or polluted areas.

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