Nature-based solutions for resilient cities

Indian cities need to adopt, integrate and scale up nature-based solutions (NbS) as part of their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts to build climate resilience, according to the India Forum for Nature-based Solutions. NbS address societal challenges, foster community development and help identify how natural ecosystems can be protected, developed, and utilized to benefit humans, boost biodiversity and build systemic resilience, as stated by the Forum’s website.

The Forum’s website also stresses that NbS have emerged globally as cost-effective, sustainable solutions offering a range of benefits including improved resilience, limiting climate change impacts and enhanced biodiversity along with the co-benefits of improved health and social well-being. The potential of NbS has yet to be realized, in India, due to some significant challenges. While some of these challenges, like the availability of urban land, are consistent with global challenges facing NbS, many more are specific to the Indian urban context. There is still limited awareness, experience and documented evidence with NbS in Indian cities and available knowledge on NbS models, impact measurement framework, and operations and maintenance methodologies are yet to be tailored or adapted to the Indian experience.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says on is website that nature must be at the heart of our cities: the places we work, play and engage. Urban nature-based solutions address multiple challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss, disaster risk, water and food security, human health and socio-economic development. People and nature benefit when the natural environment in and around cities is enhanced. NbS are defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.’’

According to the WWF, NbS address clear societal challenges: food security, climate change, water security, human health, disaster risk, natural and economic development, whilst protecting nature through monitoring of robust indicators. The solutions exist and nature provides many of the answers, including in our cities. Learning from natural systems and processes can guide urban policies and help cities and local communities become more resilient and stable. Through urban NbS both people and nature benefit when the natural environment in and around cities is enhanced. NbS can help foster sustainable urban development, while meeting climate adaptation and mitigation goals. They help biodiversity to thrive and human habitats to become more resilient. Incorporating nature in cities improves their liveability, particularly for vulnerable population, by reducing temperatures, filtering water and cleaning air.

The growth in urban NbS can be witnessed across the globe, as highlighted by the WWF: in urban and peri-urban areas, in global mega-cities and villages, in cities in the Global North and South, in coastal zones and inland areas, including cities and towns bordering agriculture habitat and biodiversity hotspots, such as forests and wetlands. NbS should correspond to the local context and ecosystem, but a closer integration between cities and nature is possible in multiple contexts.

The India Forum for Nature-based Solutions is India’s first urban NbS consortium that aims to raise awareness and scale up adoption of nature-based solutions across cities in India. It brings together entrepreneurs, solution providers, research organizations, academia, civil society, technical experts, government agencies and policy makers to work towards scaling up the adoption of NbS and strengthen climate resilience across Indian cities communities and.

The Forum aims to achieve climate-proof 100 million residents and infrastructure worth $100 billion in Indian cities by 2030. It is the first-of-its-kind platform of engagement on urban NbS in India. It will harness the power of the collective to mainstream ecosystem services and nature-based solutions via peer-to-peer exchange of best practices, technical training and knowledge sharing. The key objectives of the Forum are to define a shared language for urban NbS that clearly communicates impact and compels action; to leverage capacities across stakeholder groups to drive investment and strengthen delivery mechanisms; and to enable national and subnational policy to integrate and mainstream nature-based solutions across urban plans and projects. The principles of NbS that it will support include ecosystem benefits and ecological integrity; community resilience and social benefits; and livelihoods and economic benefits.