Driving Social Value through Mainstreaming Nature-based solutions (NbS)
Mainstreaming nature-based solutions to deliver greater value, led by United Utilities, seeks to brings together multi-sectorial expertise and leadership to collaboratively create and test new solutions to remove barriers to nature-based solutions through real-life case studies and facilitate and enable transition of nature-based solutions into business-as-usual.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) involve working with nature to address societal challenges, supporting human well-being and biodiversity. They include the protection, restoration or management of natural and semi-natural ecosystems; the sustainable management of aquatic systems and working lands; and integration of nature in and around our cities. They are actions that are underpinned by biodiversity and designed and implemented in a way that respects the rights, values and knowledge of local communities.
Nature-based solutions can address a number of societal challenges, and, when delivered in the right way, promote greater resilience to climate change, environmental outcomes, economic growth, connecting natural and built environment and sustainable development. They support social inclusion, diversity, equity and justice, connecting communities to nature, providing recreational, health and well-being benefits.
However, the evidence[1] suggests that this social added value can differ significantly, depending on socio-economic status, location, gender and ethnicity, strongly biased towards affluent groups and geographies. Therefore, minorities and deprived communities living in low-income places, particularly in urban areas where the availability and access to green/blue public spaces is limited, are lesser beneficiaries of NbS, when compared to well-off groups. In rural areas, they have traditionally been associated with private land ownership and control, making NbS a privilege of the few, rather than a benefit to the many, perpetuating social inequality and exclusion. This is seen across how NbS are designed, delivered and funded, often through a siloed and narrow approach, and how their value is assessed, mainly based on financial rather than on multiple metrics.
The Mainstreaming NbS project is aiming to address these systemic failures, by re-thinking how to fairly assess the total value of NbS, stimulating multiple funding sources, promoting participation and collaboration of different groups and unlikely allies, engaging diverse stakeholders and landscapes, exploring enabling policies and regulation, standardising approaches that promote their wider uptake and building capacity and expertise in NbS from all parts of society.
Alongside 22 other partners, including 9 water companies in England & Wales and multiple charities, this project is catalysing innovation, collaboration, inclusivity and diversity of perspectives to drive transformational change, by making NbS more common practice and therefore more accessible, in a way that equitably benefits society and the environment.
[1] The development of a Gender, Inclusion and Diversity Framework for inclusive Nature-based Solutions in cities (cambridge.org)