Biodiversity enhancement

Diversity in ecosystems, species and populations is essential to maintain and support life on Earth. Currently, state of nature is declining at accelerating rates, and this is often referred to as ‘the nature crisis’ or ‘biodiversity loss crisis’. The main drivers of biodiversity loss are climate change and human activities such as land-use change, invasive species, pollution and exploitation of natural resources.

Protecting and supporting biodiversity is a fundamental feature of the nature-based solutions concept. Nature restoration and protection are activities that in themselves can be defined as nature-based solutions. Nature’s own ecosystem functions are usually very good at handling environmental extremes such as floods and droughts. Natural wetlands and floodplains may for example decrease the flooding extents downstream. Natural ecosystems and native species can also be more resilient to changes and pressures than degraded ecosystems.

Urban nature-based solutions such as rain gardens and stream daylighting mimic natural ecosystem functions and may therefore also contribute to climate change adaptation and biodiversity enhancement. Often, policies and legislation related to nature protection and biodiversity can also contribute to the increased use of nature-based solutions, even if they are not mentioned specifically. Policies related to NBS are essentially also policies for nature and the environment. This means that principles such as the mitigation hierarchy (prioritising avoiding and minimising impact), adaptive management and precaution are fundamental.