Nature-based drainage systems can provide solutions to managing excessive rainwater in highly developed, urban areas. Credit: Rudmer Zwerver.
Nature-based solutions to sustainability challenges Nature-based solutions are an important part of efforts to combat climate change and can help cities address other sustainability challenges, yet they have not been adopted on a widespread basis. The Naturvation project brings together researchers from several disciplines to unlock the wider potential of nature-based solutions, as Professor Harriet Bulkeley explains. The issue of
climate change is high on the agenda in many European cities, as they seek to reduce carbon emissions and protect the local environment. While climate change is a prominent issue, it is not the only challenge facing city authorities, who are also looking for effective ways to deal with a wide range of other concerns. “It’s apparent that as cities are responding to climate change, they’re trying to do it in a way that allows them to also meet other sustainability goals, such as those around economic regeneration, social inclusion, or health and wellbeing,” says Harriet Bulkeley, Professor of Geography at Durham University in the UK. Naturebased solutions (NBS) can be an effective way to address some of these challenges, a topic at the heart of Professor Bulkeley’s work as the Principal Investigator of the Naturvation project. “The project is looking at how cities can realise multiple sustainable development goals,” she outlines.
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Nature-based solutions A well designed NBS can play an important role in this respect, for example through helping to create recreational areas and improve biodiversity. The idea of a NBS is not easy to define, but Professor Bulkeley says it can be broadly thought of as working with nature in cities in order to achieve sustainable development goals. “For example, if a local community is trying to restore a small park at the end of a street for leisure and recreation, and to create habitats for birds, butterflies and bees, then that’s a NBS,” she explains. Researchers in the project aim to build a deeper picture of the NBS that are being developed in different cities across the world, part of the goal of encouraging their wider implementation. “We started off by surveying 100 different cities in Europe, and looking at the NBS that were being implemented in each of those cities,” continues Professor Bulkeley. “We were interested in looking at solutions on all sorts of different scales.”
This data is central to the development of the Urban Nature Navigator, a multi-criteria decision-making tool intended to help decisionmakers identify which type of solution is best suited to their specific local priorities. If the plan is to build blue infrastructure in a city, then that is likely to contribute to goals around biodiversity and climate change for example, but not necessarily others. “Most blue infrastructure projects, as far as we can tell, don’t do very much for social inclusion or economic regeneration,” says Professor Bulkeley. The project’s agenda also includes some work on the economics of NBS, which Professor Bulkeley says is an important consideration. “We think it’s important to achieve an understanding of the economic value of NBS, because ultimately somebody has to decide on whether to pay for them,” she points out. “How would you design a business model? What business models have been successfully used with NBS?” An element of a business model might be about generating revenue, while another
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could be about avoiding future costs, for example in reducing flood risk. The project’s analysis shows that any one single business model on its own is unlikely to support NBS however; instead Professor Bulkeley talks about needing to ‘stack’ them together. “It’s about bringing two or three business models together in order to actually realise NBS,” she says. The financial model of NBS is an important element of the project’s work. “We’ve been looking at what it will take to mainstream NBS amongst investors and financial institutions. We’re finding that there is great potential for NBS to be financed by the insurance sector, and also by institutional
interested in institutional investors who are also landholders, like the National Trust. Not only are they long-term in their investment planning, but they also hold assets which they could be investing in themselves,” outlines Professor Bulkeley. Alongside looking at the financial side, Professor Bulkeley is also investigating the importance of policy and regulation in making NBS more of a mainstream option, as well as the role of the urban development industry. “Somebody has to build a NBS. So you have to know what it means to put a green roof on your building, or to leave enough space in design plans for a neighbourhood to create an ecological corridor,” she says.
It’s apparent that as
cities are responding to climate change, they’re trying to do it in a way that allows them to also meet other sustainability goals, such as those around economic regeneration, social inclusion, or health and wellbeing. investors,” continues Professor Bulkeley. “The insurance sector has got a really key role to play in terms of the potential for NBS to help reduce risk, and therefore reduce premiums.” The insurance sector has not historically been involved in this area, so a lot of support will be required. However, insurance companies and institutional investors like pension funds tend to adopt a long-term outlook, so could be encouraged to invest in NBS. “I’m particularly
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Implementation of NBS A variety of different factors need to be considered in the implementation of a NBS, including the views of people in the communities affected. Transdisciplinary partnerships have been established in each of the cities that the project is working in, so that researchers can understand what NBS mean from the perspective of all the different actors involved. “We’ve analysed how to create the
governance arrangements that can support the implementation of NBS,” explains Professor Bulkeley. NBS are implemented primarily in partnerships, sometimes bringing together the public and private sectors, which can be a challenge for the organisations involved. “Organisations don’t always work to the same timelines, and they may have different priorities. The private sector will sometimes want quick wins, while sometimes private companies are willing to bear unpopularity and ignore electoral cycles, in a way that local authorities aren’t,” says Professor Bulkeley. The aim here is to understand the essential ingredients of good partnerships and identify where governance arrangements work well. Local authorities also need to consider the impact of NBS in areas like the property market, another topic of interest to Professor Bulkeley. “There’s a lot of concern about ‘green gentrification’, the idea that if you bring NBS into a neighbourhood, the overall value of property will increase,” she outlines. This will affect the viability of NBS as a regeneration strategy. “A NBS may improve a community’s air quality and give them access to recreational space, but if people can no longer afford to live there then they will not fully benefit,” says Professor Bulkelely. “Effectively you’re making the situation more inequitable. That is a really big challenge for NBS – and we see plenty of evidence that that’s happening.” A NBS would ideally not be imposed from above, but rather be based on the involvement of the local community. This may slow up
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NATURVATION Nature Based Urban Innovation
Project Objectives
To unlock the potential of NBS for sustainable urban development, NATURVATION will take a transdisciplinary, internationally comparative approach to: • Advance assessment approaches to capture the multiple impacts & values of NBS to deliver a robust evidence base for decision-making; • Enable innovation to identify the most promising governance, business/finance and participation models and how to overcome the systemic conditions that currently limit their use to support systemic integration; • Generate momentum to realise the potential of NBS through co-design, co-development & co-implementation of new partnerships, knowledge, recommendations, processes and tools required to build capacity, enable replication and foster cultural change.
Project Funding
Funded by Research and Innovation action (RIA). Total funding: € 7 797 877.50
Project Partners
• Durham University • Central European University • Lund University • Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona • Utrecht University • Ecologic Institute • ICLEI Europe • Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IFL) • PBL Netherlands • Environmental Assessment Agency • ENT environment and management • Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) • Newcastle City Council • City of Malmö • City of Utrecht
Contact Details
Project Coordinator, Professor Harriet Bulkeley Durham University, Department of Geography, Lower Mountjoy, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, United Kingdom T: +44 191 3341800 E: info@naturvation.eu W: https://www.naturvation.eu Professor Harriet Bulkeley
Harriet Bulkeley holds joint appointments as Professor in the Department of Geography, Durham University, and at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. Her research focuses on environmental governance and the politics of climate change, energy and sustainable cities.
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Green walls promote biodiversity, improve air quality and address heat stress in cities. Credit: Evannovostro.
the implementation process in some cases, particularly with larger projects, yet Professor Bulkeley says certain things can be done quite rapidly. “I’ve been fascinated to see growing interest in the idea of miniature forests – small, tightly packed forests which get communities involved and have fast-growing species,” she outlines. These small patches of green space could then potentially form part of more ambitious schemes in future. “For example, making a certain area a bit greener, even with temporary structures, could help create a wildlife corridor for bees or butterflies,” explains Professor Bulkeley. “Cities like Edinburgh have been looking at how to connect these existing green spaces by making small interventions which could then have a wider impact, because they help create ecological corridors.” There is also a lot of interest in using space for these solutions on a temporary basis, as a way of building knowledge in the community and demonstrating the impact of NBS. Communities in Barcelona and in Leipzig – both partner cities in the project – have been given the ability to develop temporary gardens on land that is not currently being used for regeneration. “Communities are able to use the land for a year and establish gardens,” says Professor Bulkeley. This land may eventually be used for its original intended purpose, but Professor Bulkeley nevertheless believes there is a lot of value in allowing temporary NBS, particularly as Europe recovers from the impact of Covid-19. “If we’ve got shops closing down on high streets, or an area where a housing development can no longer go ahead, what are we going to do with all that space? Could we think about allowing some form of temporary NBS in those areas?” she asks. The more immediate objective in the project is to further improve the Urban Nature Navigator,
while a visualisation tool is also being developed, which is intended to help urban planners imagine a particular area of the city when NBS have been implemented. Professor Bulkeley says the project is also engaged in modelling work. “Our partners are doing some work on ‘what if’ scenarios. So, what if half of the roofs in European cities were green roofs? What would that do for our level of flood risk?” she outlines. The wider aim in the project is to help shift the perception of NBS, to a point where they are seen as a natural option for dealing with sustainability challenges. “We’re interested in what it will take to make NBS more normal, for finance, regulation and urban development. We hope to release a series of reports designed to identify particular steps that policy-makers, business or the finance industry can take towards making NBS more normal,” says Professor Bulkeley.
Sustainable drainage systems can generate multiple benefits. Credit: Arina P Habich.
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