The Natural Solutions initiative summary, v.1
This summary report outlines the Natural Solutions Initiative (NSI) for cohesive and systemic nature-based solutions (NbS) planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.
In 2022, ACT launched the NSI, which looks to address trends in NbS applications that tend to be disconnected due to diverse disciplinary and practitioner approaches, isolated project-based planning of NbS and narrow applications that do not capture the multiple ecological and community benefits of NbS.
The Natural Solutions Initiative Summary: Putting Nature Back into Nature-based Solutions provides an overview of the NSI Framework-for-Action to:
Build coherence using three nested approaches - ecosystem-based management, natural asset management, and blue-green infrastructure strategies;
Promote cohesion across four scales of NbS action - watershed, community, neighbourhood, and parcel; and
Advance systemic NbS across five key areas - climate action, biodiversity, Indigenous knowledges and leadership, sustainable service delivery, and health, equity, and justice.
A key element of this work is to amplify and support Indigenous knowledges and leadership at the watershed and territorial scales, promoting innovative co-governance models and adaptive management approaches as crucial aspects of stewarding the ecological processes and ecosystem services upon which all communities depend.
ACT is seeking a diverse network of partners to work with us to tailor and evaluate the NSI Framework-for-Action in practice. The goal is to optimize the values associated with NbS. Please reach out to actinfo@sfu.ca if you know of any potential partnership opportunities to co-create and advance cohesive and systemic NbS.
