For those with an active role in the Interreg NSR Building with Nature project, it may seem obvious: nature based solutions (NBS) of all kinds have already proven to be highly cost-effective and sustainable for some of the toughest flood management challenges facing the countries of the North Sea Region. And what’s more, they generally also deliver extensive co-benefits to both communities and vulnerable ecosystems. Among policymakers and decisionmakers who have experienced it first-hand, Building with Nature (BwN) is rapidly becoming mainstream. However, outside of those regions, communities, and environments where these solutions have been applied, BwN is still often perceived as unfamiliar, experimental, perhaps even financially risky.

The conference 'Be Adaptive to become resilient’ lived up to its title in many ways. Not only because of the content of the conference, but also in the way the conference was held. Due to Corona measures we had to organize an online conference in a short time frame. This turned out to be a great success. Nearly 200 people from the North Sea Region joined us online to bring the discussion about how to adapt to climate change one step further.

It’s one thing to design a Nature Based Solution (NBS), but actually implementing the solution usually calls for an exceptional level of cooperation and understanding across a range of stakeholders – often parties with totally different interests at stake. In the Eddleston Water catchment of the river Tweed, Natural Flood Management (NFM) solutions were proposed to mitigate the risk and severity of flood damage to riverside communities lying between the Eddleston headwaters and the Tweed. But to achieve this benefit downstream, these NFM solutions needed to be implemented up to 20 km upstream – on farmland with dozens of different owners, from owner-occupiers to absentee landlords.