This week, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), the Network for Engineering With Nature, and the University of California Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience convened a National Practice Forum on Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). The goal of the forum was to spur discussion around overcoming challenges in scaling NBS and brainstorming collaborative solutions.
Lucky for me, this event was in my own backyard at the Beckman Center of the NASEM and adjacent to my alma mater UC Irvine! I got to go in person as part of the team working on nature-positive insurance and coastal resilience. As an organization working in space for 3 years, I shared our lessons learned around NBS in a short lightning talk including: the need to break down silos between groups (insurance industry, practitioners, academia, etc.), pilot projects take time to launch but are key to learn from to subsequently scale NBS across the state, and finally, agencies are grappling with questions around monitoring, choosing performance metrics, capturing multi-benefits, and systems to learn across projects. This was my first talk representing OST, and it was a blast!
Among all the mingling, panelist, and brainstorming sessions, I noticed a few major themes and lessons arising:
- • Scaling is one of the largest challenges for realizing the risk reduction benefits of NBS. In order to scale, we need to learn across projects which will require some level of centralization and standardization of metrics and monitoring. Coordination and collaboration across sectors and disciplines will be key.
- • Multi-benefits and co-benefits of NBS projects need to be incorporated into decision making tools such as benefit–cost analysis. Many researchers and others are developing methods on how to capture, measure, and include social and economic factors more effectively and meaningfully than they currently are.
- • Funding is a barrier to NBS implementation. Projects need stable and long-term funding to cover the life cycle of a project including for monitoring and maintenance following the project’s construction.
- • Community engagement is crucial for NBS project success, and projects should reflect the needs and values of the communities they are constructed. Communities should be involved from the start in designing and planning projects. Recommendations included, but weren’t limited to: building relationships beyond funding cycles, creating touch points with and investing in community-based organizations, Tribes, and leaders, building upon projects that already exist and are led by communities, and respecting and incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
Moving forward, OST will continue to engage with state agencies to determine and advance the science needs around accelerating NBS implementation in California.
