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Ecoshape presents Integrated System based asset management. A way of thinking about nature based solutions and all their associated benefits that incorporates total lifetime performance, their adaptability and uncertainties.

The European Commission's Science for Environment Policy published a new Future Brief on Nature Based Solutions (NbS). The research collated in the Future brief confirms that NbS deliver simultaneously multiple benefits and shows the wide-ranging beneficial impacts of scaling up their implementation across Europe.

Research findings just revealed by one of the EU North Sea Region Building with Nature partners in Scotland are revealing the true value of taking a sustainable approach to reducing flood risk - through the careful and targeted use of Natural Flood Management (NFM) measures, building with nature at a landscape scale across the whole Eddleston Water river catchment.

Over many years, the Building with Nature (BwN) project has built up a major collection of data, research results and publications on the use of Nature Based Solutions for climate resilience. In some cases, a specific NBS has repeatedly proven its success. But gaining recognition of the evidence base for NBS is still more challenging than for proven concrete structures. We brought two senior scientists together for an informal discussion on what it takes to transition BwN and NBS from the phase of “research project” to “standard practice”.

Building with Nature has given us some insightful lessons. You can find these lessons in the reports now published.

When does Building with Nature (BwN) become the first choice for climate adaptation measures? What are the obstacles to choosing Nature Based Solutions (NBS), as opposed to traditional engineered infrastructure? And what have we learnt until now? During the one-day Road to CAS event in Amsterdam in October, the EcoShape foundation hosted a webinar to address these questions.

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.

Initially, the online event we organized in June with the projects of FAIR and C5a was intended as an end event for Building with Nature. It became a not-yet-the-end-event after all and the Building with Nature continues project. This because of a prolongation request we filed and which has been approved.