Building with Nature – Exploring Nature Based Solutions

Director of EcoShape Building with Nature, Henk Nieboer and Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs of The Netherlands, have released the position paper about critical steps for upscaling Building with Nature.

The two authors, invite the international water sector to join forces and scale up the Nature Based Solutions.

Ovink and Nieboer argue in their paper that the following steps are critically important to achieve upscaling:

• Educate the new generation of engineers, designers, ecologists, policy makers, politicians and managers in the principles of Nature Based Solutions;
• Develop a credible narrative of Nature Based Solutions on landscape scale for various water related challenges, including business cases and examples of successful (pilot) projects;
• Implement large scale pilot projects worldwide and disseminate the experience and knowledge gained;
• Involve communities in the planning and implementation of nature based solutions and equip them with knowledge and financial means in order to scale up and sustain such solutions, working side by side with governments and private sector;
• Scale up existing pilots and replicate these in international consortia across the globe, in partnership with the financial sector (Multilateral Development Banks, the Green Climate Fund, governments, private sector and pension funds).

EcoShape is a consortium of engineering firms, knowledge institutes, dredging companies, NGO’s and government agencies working together to develop, test and share knowledge about Building with Nature in pilot projects.

Partners are Boskalis, Van Oord, Witteveen+Bos, Deltares, Wageningen University, Arcadis, Royal Haskoning DHV, HKV Lijn in Water, IHC, Vereniging van Waterbouwers, Wetlands International and Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.