Nature-Based Solutions
Nature-Based Solutions
Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) are approaches that protect, sustainably manage, restore, or create ecosystems in ways intended to address societal challenges while also supporting biodiversity and human well-being. They include interventions involving forests, wetlands, rivers, floodplains, agricultural landscapes, grasslands, coastal habitats, urban green spaces, soils, reefs, and other ecological systems.
The concept has developed from earlier approaches such as ecosystem-based adaptation, ecological restoration, green infrastructure, natural infrastructure, watershed management, and ecosystem-based disaster-risk reduction. A central feature of the modern NbS framework is that projects should provide measurable benefits to both people and nature rather than simply using vegetation or ecosystems as substitutes for conventional infrastructure.
Nature-Based Solutions are increasingly being applied to climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity conservation, disaster-risk reduction, water management, food production, public health, urban planning, economic development, and community resilience.
Definitions, Principles, and Standards
Nature-Based Solutions have been defined in several overlapping ways, creating a need for standards that distinguish genuine ecosystem-based interventions from projects that use the terminology without delivering significant ecological or social benefits.
The IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions provides criteria and indicators for designing, evaluating, improving, and scaling NbS projects. Its framework emphasizes clearly defined societal challenges, appropriate scale, biodiversity gains, economic feasibility, inclusive governance, management of trade-offs, adaptive management, and long-term sustainability.
Effective NbS therefore require more than simply planting trees or adding vegetation. Projects must be appropriate to local ecological conditions, consider potential trade-offs, involve affected communities, protect biodiversity, and establish systems for measuring results.
Nature-Based Solutions also have limits. Ecosystems cannot compensate indefinitely for continued greenhouse-gas emissions, habitat destruction, or unsustainable resource use. NbS are generally most effective when they complement rather than replace rapid emissions reductions, conservation policy, environmental regulation, and appropriate conventional infrastructure.
Climate Mitigation and Ecosystem Restoration
Forests, wetlands, soils, grasslands, mangroves, peatlands, and other ecosystems store substantial quantities of carbon. Protecting intact ecosystems can prevent emissions caused by deforestation and degradation, while restoration may rebuild carbon stocks over time.
Forest restoration is among the most widely studied natural climate solutions. Reforestation, assisted natural regeneration, improved forest management, agroforestry, and restoration of degraded forest landscapes can increase carbon storage while supporting habitat, water regulation, soil protection, and livelihoods.
However, maximizing carbon storage is not necessarily the same as maximizing biodiversity or ecosystem resilience. Monoculture plantations, poorly located tree planting, or projects that replace naturally non-forested ecosystems can create ecological problems. Restoration therefore needs to account for the characteristics of the original ecosystem and the needs of local communities.
Natural climate solutions can make an important contribution to climate mitigation, but their effectiveness varies by ecosystem, location, management practice, permanence, and the opportunity costs associated with land.
Agriculture, Agroforestry, and Soils
Agricultural landscapes provide major opportunities for Nature-Based Solutions because farming depends directly on soil, water, biodiversity, pollination, and other ecosystem processes.
Agroforestry combines trees with crops or livestock and can improve soil fertility, carbon storage, shade, water regulation, habitat connectivity, and farm resilience. In degraded agricultural landscapes, agroforestry can also contribute to restoration while diversifying household income and food production.
Other agricultural NbS include maintaining ground cover, restoring riparian vegetation, improving soil organic matter, reducing erosion, conserving wetlands, incorporating habitat for beneficial insects, and managing landscapes to retain water.
Research from Africa and other regions indicates that agroforestry and ecosystem-based agriculture can help communities adapt to heat, drought, rainfall variability, declining soil fertility, and other climate pressures. Adoption nevertheless depends on land tenure, financing, local knowledge, markets, extension services, and appropriate species selection.
Urban Nature-Based Solutions
Cities are major areas of NbS development because urbanization often increases heat, flooding, runoff, air pollution, habitat loss, and human separation from natural environments.
Urban Nature-Based Solutions include parks, street trees, urban forests, green roofs, green walls, rain gardens, bioswales, wetlands, permeable landscapes, restored streams, vegetated corridors, and blue-green infrastructure.
Trees and vegetation can reduce urban temperatures through shading and evapotranspiration. Green roofs and walls can reduce building heat loads, while parks and urban forests may provide cooling at neighborhood scales.
Rain gardens, bioswales, wetlands, and permeable landscapes can retain and infiltrate stormwater rather than rapidly directing it into drainage systems. These approaches may reduce flooding while also improving water quality and providing habitat.
Successful urban NbS generally require integration with transportation, housing, water management, land-use planning, public health, and conventional infrastructure rather than being treated as isolated beautification projects.
Floods, Rivers, Wetlands, and Water Management
Nature-Based Solutions are increasingly used to manage floods and water resources.
Wetlands can store floodwater, filter pollutants, support biodiversity, store carbon, and regulate water flows. Floodplain restoration allows rivers to occupy areas that historically absorbed high flows rather than forcing all floodwater through engineered channels.
Other approaches include restoring river meanders, reconnecting floodplains, planting riparian vegetation, restoring forests in watersheds, reducing soil erosion, creating retention areas, and combining natural systems with conventional flood defenses.
Constructed wetlands can also provide wastewater treatment by using plants, soils, microorganisms, and natural biogeochemical processes to remove nutrients and contaminants.
Evidence indicates that effective flood-risk management often requires combining hydrology, ecology, engineering, planning, governance, economics, and community participation.
Green Roofs, Rain Gardens, and Urban Stormwater
Decentralized stormwater systems are an important category of urban Nature-Based Solutions.
Rain gardens and bioretention areas collect runoff and allow water to infiltrate through vegetation and engineered soils. They can reduce runoff volume, slow peak flows, remove pollutants, and create small areas of habitat.
Green roofs retain rainfall while also providing insulation, cooling, vegetation, and potential biodiversity benefits. Newer systems can incorporate sensors and controls that adjust water storage and drainage in response to weather conditions.
Tree boxes, vegetated swales, constructed wetlands, permeable surfaces, and rainwater-storage systems can be combined into networks that treat rainfall as a resource rather than simply waste water to be removed from cities.
Research also emphasizes that the performance of these systems depends heavily on design, soil conditions, maintenance, rainfall patterns, available space, and long-term management.
Coastal and Marine Resilience
Coastal ecosystems can function as natural infrastructure.
Mangroves, salt marshes, coral reefs, oyster reefs, seagrass beds, dunes, and living shorelines can reduce waves, erosion, storm impacts, or coastal flooding while simultaneously providing habitat and other ecosystem services.
Mangrove restoration can improve shoreline stability, carbon storage, fisheries habitat, and biodiversity, but successful projects must account for tidal conditions, sediment movement, hydrology, species ecology, and future sea-level rise.
Coral reefs and reef restoration may reduce wave energy before it reaches the shoreline. Hybrid approaches can combine ecological restoration with engineered structures when natural systems alone cannot provide sufficient protection.
Seagrass restoration can stabilize sediments, support marine biodiversity, store carbon, and in some circumstances contribute to coastal protection.
Coastal NbS are particularly relevant to small island developing states and densely populated coastal communities, although their effectiveness depends on local environmental conditions and the magnitude of future climate impacts.
Biodiversity, Climate Adaptation, and Disaster Risk Reduction
One of the principal arguments for Nature-Based Solutions is their potential to address climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously.
Healthy ecosystems can reduce vulnerability to floods, erosion, heat, drought, landslides, storm surges, and other hazards. Forests can stabilize slopes and regulate water; wetlands can store floodwater; coastal ecosystems can reduce wave energy; and urban vegetation can moderate extreme heat.
These interventions can also create or restore habitat and improve ecological connectivity.
The biodiversity benefits of NbS should not be assumed automatically, however. Poorly designed projects may favor a small number of species, replace natural ecosystems, introduce unsuitable species, or prioritize carbon storage over ecological diversity.
Monitoring biodiversity outcomes is therefore important when evaluating whether projects genuinely provide benefits for nature.
Drought, Wildfire, and Dryland Resilience
Nature-Based Solutions for drought have historically received less research attention than flood-related interventions, but interest is increasing as drought and water scarcity intensify.
Watershed restoration, soil improvement, reforestation, agroforestry, wetland restoration, water harvesting, sustainable grazing, and improved vegetation cover can increase infiltration, reduce erosion, retain water, and improve landscape resilience.
In drylands, community participation and appropriate land-management practices are especially important because poorly selected interventions may compete for scarce water or undermine existing livelihoods.
Nature-based approaches are also being explored for wildfire resilience. These include diversified forests, grazing, prescribed burning, ecological fuel management, rewetting degraded landscapes, green firebreaks, and restoration following fires.
Such approaches generally form part of broader landscape fire-management strategies rather than eliminating wildfire risk.
Human Health and Well-Being
Urban nature can function as a form of public-health infrastructure.
Parks, gardens, trees, greenways, wetlands, vegetated corridors, and other green and blue spaces can reduce exposure to heat, noise, and some forms of air pollution while providing opportunities for physical activity, recreation, social interaction, and contact with nature.
Research has linked access to natural environments with improvements in several measures of mental and physical well-being, although the strength of evidence differs among interventions and health outcomes.
Greenspace benefits are also shaped by accessibility, quality, safety, maintenance, cultural relevance, and geographic distribution. Simply increasing the quantity of urban vegetation does not guarantee equal access to its benefits.
Public-health considerations therefore overlap closely with environmental justice and urban planning.
Indigenous Knowledge, Community Leadership, and Equity
The success of Nature-Based Solutions depends not only on ecology but also on who designs, governs, owns, finances, and benefits from projects.
Indigenous peoples and local communities often possess detailed knowledge of landscapes, species, water systems, seasonal cycles, fire, agriculture, and ecosystem management. Incorporating this knowledge can improve the ecological and cultural suitability of NbS.
Community-led projects in Africa, Oceania, Canada, and other regions demonstrate that ecosystem restoration can be connected with livelihoods, cultural values, food security, water security, health, and local governance.
At the same time, Nature-Based Solutions can create conflicts over land, access, resources, and decision-making. Conservation or restoration imposed without meaningful participation may reproduce inequality or forms of "green colonialism."
Equitable NbS therefore require genuine participation, recognition of land and resource rights, transparent decision-making, and fair distribution of benefits and costs.
Governance, Justice, and Implementation
A major challenge facing Nature-Based Solutions is the gap between successful demonstrations and widespread implementation.
Projects often cross institutional boundaries involving water agencies, environmental authorities, transportation departments, landowners, community organizations, utilities, planners, and private investors. Fragmented responsibilities can make implementation difficult.
Other barriers include limited funding, uncertain maintenance responsibilities, land availability, regulatory systems designed for conventional infrastructure, inadequate technical expertise, weak community participation, and difficulty measuring multiple benefits.
Leadership and governance arrangements influence whether projects gain legitimacy, endure over time, and can be expanded.
Mainstreaming NbS therefore requires incorporating them into ordinary planning, budgeting, infrastructure, environmental regulation, disaster-risk management, and climate policy rather than relying exclusively on temporary demonstration projects.
Economics, Finance, and Valuation
Nature-Based Solutions produce benefits that conventional financial systems often have difficulty valuing.
A restored wetland, for example, may simultaneously reduce flood damages, improve water quality, store carbon, provide wildlife habitat, support recreation, and improve nearby quality of life. These benefits may accrue to different people and institutions over different time periods.
This fragmentation can make projects financially difficult even when their total social benefits are substantial.
Funding approaches include public expenditure, ecosystem-service payments, blended finance, climate finance, conservation finance, insurance-related mechanisms, development-bank financing, and partnerships involving public and private institutions.
Cost-benefit analysis can help compare NbS with conventional infrastructure, but economic evaluation needs to account for benefits that do not have straightforward market prices.
Equity is also important: financial analysis should consider who pays for projects, who receives benefits, and whether changes in land values or access create unintended social consequences.
Monitoring, Indicators, and Evaluation
Credible Nature-Based Solutions require evidence that they actually deliver promised results.
Monitoring can include indicators for flood reduction, temperature, water quality, carbon storage, biodiversity, ecosystem condition, human health, economic benefits, participation, equity, governance, and community well-being.
Existing research shows that ecological and physical indicators are often measured more frequently than social and economic outcomes.
Long-term monitoring is particularly important because many ecosystem processes develop over years or decades. Short project funding cycles may therefore end before the full benefits or failures of an intervention become visible.
Standardized indicators, open data, quantitative evaluation frameworks, adaptive management, and long-term research can help distinguish effective Nature-Based Solutions from projects supported mainly by appealing terminology.
Scaling and International Climate Policy
Nature-Based Solutions have become increasingly integrated into international climate, biodiversity, development, and disaster-risk policies.
Governments and international institutions are incorporating ecosystem-based adaptation into national adaptation plans, climate commitments, watershed programs, urban resilience strategies, and development investments.
UN agencies, development banks, international conservation organizations, national governments, and research institutions have developed standards, guidance, investment programs, and technical tools intended to expand implementation.
Scaling NbS does not simply mean replicating the same project everywhere. Ecological conditions, land tenure, governance, culture, climate hazards, financing, and community priorities differ substantially among locations.
Effective scaling therefore involves expanding the principles and institutional capacity needed for locally appropriate solutions rather than imposing standardized ecological designs.
Africa, Asia, and the Global South
Nature-Based Solutions have particular importance in regions facing rapid urbanization, ecosystem degradation, infrastructure gaps, and high climate vulnerability.
Projects across Sub-Saharan Africa address flooding, drought, heat, water scarcity, land degradation, biodiversity loss, employment, and livelihood resilience.
Examples from Kenya include urban stormwater management, community-based adaptation, wetland restoration, agroforestry, water-resource management, and approaches incorporating Indigenous and local knowledge.
Research from African cities also shows that public acceptance of NbS depends on practical concerns such as cost, space, maintenance, land ownership, awareness, safety, and whether interventions address residents' immediate priorities.
International climate finance and development institutions increasingly view NbS as potential infrastructure investments, but successful implementation requires stronger local capacity, long-term funding, equitable governance, and project pipelines capable of moving from planning into implementation.
Combining Nature and Conventional Infrastructure
Nature-Based Solutions are not necessarily alternatives to all engineered infrastructure.
In many circumstances the most effective systems combine natural and conventional measures. Wetlands may complement levees, mangroves may work alongside coastal defenses, urban rain gardens may supplement drainage networks, and restored watersheds may reduce pressures on reservoirs and water-treatment infrastructure.
These combinations are often described as green-gray or hybrid infrastructure.
The appropriate balance depends on risk levels, available land, ecological conditions, maintenance requirements, costs, and the consequences of infrastructure failure.
Using ecosystems as infrastructure also requires recognizing that natural systems change over time. They can grow, migrate, recover, or degrade, making adaptive management an essential part of long-term planning.
Conclusion
Nature-Based Solutions represent a broad shift toward treating functioning ecosystems as essential components of climate resilience, biodiversity conservation, water management, disaster-risk reduction, public health, and sustainable development.
The strongest evidence supports using NbS as part of integrated strategies rather than as universal replacements for conventional infrastructure or rapid reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.
Well-designed projects can produce multiple benefits at once: restoring habitat, storing carbon, reducing floods and heat, protecting coastlines, improving water quality, supporting livelihoods, and creating healthier communities.
Those benefits are not automatic. Effective Nature-Based Solutions require ecological integrity, appropriate design, meaningful community participation, equitable governance, reliable financing, monitoring, long-term maintenance, and realistic assessment of environmental limits.
As climate change, biodiversity loss, water insecurity, and urbanization intensify, Nature-Based Solutions are likely to become increasingly important. Their long-term value will depend on whether governments and communities move beyond isolated projects and incorporate healthy ecosystems into the basic infrastructure and decision-making systems through which societies manage land, water, climate risk, and development.
Foundations, Definitions, and Standards
| Elena Ares, Nuala Burnett & Abbas Panjwani | House of Commons Library | 2026-04-07
Nature based solutions for climate change. Reviews the meaning of Nature-Based Solutions, their role in UK climate policy, potential benefits, funding questions, implementation challenges, and concerns about relying excessively on nature to offset emissions.
| Denilson da Silva Bezerra | Scientific Reports | 2025-07-01
Nature-based solutions to climate change. Introduces a collection of research examining the capacity of ecosystem-based approaches to contribute to climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and sustainable development.
| Ewa Sowińska-Świerkosz & Joan García | Nature-Based Solutions | 2022
What are Nature-based solutions (NBS)? Setting core ideas for concept clarification. Examines competing definitions of NbS and identifies core characteristics needed to distinguish them from related environmental management concepts.
| Alexandre Chausson et al. | Global Change Biology | 2020-09-09
Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation. Systematically maps evidence showing how ecosystem protection, restoration, and management can reduce vulnerability to climate hazards while identifying substantial gaps in the evidence base.
Ensuring effective Nature-based Solutions. Explains why NbS must produce benefits for both biodiversity and society and warns against approaches that simply apply the label to conventional development or poorly designed carbon projects.
| Nathalie Seddon et al. | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | 2020-01-27
Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges. Reviews the potential of ecosystems to address climate change while emphasizing ecological limits, trade-offs, biodiversity safeguards, and the continued need for rapid fossil-fuel emission reductions.
IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions: first edition. Introduces eight criteria and associated indicators for designing, assessing, improving, and scaling Nature-Based Solutions while safeguarding biodiversity and community benefits.
Guidance for using the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions. Provides practical guidance for applying the Global Standard and evaluating whether proposed projects genuinely qualify as effective Nature-Based Solutions.
| Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham et al. | Environmental Science & Policy | 2019-08
Core principles for successfully implementing and upscaling Nature-based Solutions. Sets out principles intended to prevent misuse of the NbS concept and guide projects toward measurable ecological, social, and economic benefits.
| Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham, Christine Janzen, Stewart Maginnis & Gretchen Walters | IUCN | 2016
Nature-based solutions to address global societal challenges. Establishes a foundational framework for Nature-Based Solutions, explaining how protecting, sustainably managing, and restoring ecosystems can address major societal challenges while supporting biodiversity and human well-being.
Climate Mitigation, Forests, and Ecological Restoration
| Various authors | Forests for Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth | 2025
Improving restoration and resilience in forest landscapes through nature-based solutions. Examines how forest restoration can increase ecological resilience while generating livelihoods, ecosystem services, climate benefits, and more inclusive economic opportunities.
| Leah L. Bremer et al. | Scientific Reports / U.S. Forest Service Research | 2025
Carbon benefits through agroforestry transitions on unmanaged fallow agricultural land in Hawaiʻi. Measures how converting fallow agricultural lands to agroforestry systems can increase carbon storage while supporting culturally and ecologically important landscapes.
| Various authors | Nature | 2025
Towards more effective nature-based climate solutions in global forests. Examines how forest-based climate interventions can be targeted and managed more effectively while accounting for ecological conditions, climate benefits, risks, and competing land uses.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-06
Nature-based solutions and restoration are intertwined but not identical. Explains the considerable overlap between ecological restoration and NbS while emphasizing important differences in objectives, terminology, societal benefits, and implementation.
| Brian Buma et al. | Nature Climate Change | 2024-03-21
Expert review of the science underlying nature-based climate solutions. Evaluates scientific evidence behind major natural climate solutions and identifies where mitigation estimates are robust, uncertain, or dependent on local environmental conditions.
| Susan C. Cook-Patton et al. | Nature Communications | 2024
The principles of natural climate solutions. Presents principles for developing climate interventions that genuinely reduce greenhouse gases while respecting ecosystems, Indigenous peoples, local communities, permanence, and biodiversity.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024
Ecosystem restoration as a nature-based solution in China. Examines restoration experiences and their potential to address ecological degradation, climate risks, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem-service decline at large spatial scales.
Applications and perspectives for land restoration through nature-based solutions. Reviews how restoration-oriented NbS can recover degraded land, ecosystem functions, biodiversity, soil productivity, climate resilience, and associated human benefits.
| Nature-based Solutions Initiative | Nature-based Solutions Initiative | 2022-03-24
The biodiversity and ecosystem service contributions and trade-offs of forest restoration approaches. Compares forest restoration strategies and demonstrates that maximizing carbon storage alone may not maximize biodiversity or other ecosystem services.
| United Nations Environment Programme & IUCN | UNEP | 2021-11-04
Nature-based Solutions for climate change mitigation. Assesses how conservation, improved ecosystem management, and restoration can contribute to climate mitigation while delivering biodiversity and human-development benefits.
Agriculture, Agroforestry, and Soils
| Various authors | Discover Environment | 2026-07
Evidence on agroforestry practices for climate change adaptation in Africa from a systematic review. Reviews African evidence showing where agroforestry can reduce climate vulnerability and identifies environmental, economic, institutional, and knowledge barriers to adoption.
| Various authors | Agroforestry Systems | 2026-06-25
Agroforestry and degraded croplands restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review. Synthesizes evidence on the ability of agroforestry to restore degraded farmland, improve soils, support biodiversity, enhance productivity, and strengthen climate resilience.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2026-06
Agroforestry systems: A nature-based solution and ecosystem approach empowering rural communities to tackle climate change. Examines how agroforestry can combine climate adaptation and mitigation with livelihood diversification, ecosystem restoration, and increased rural resilience.
| Humberto Blanco-Canqui | Science of The Total Environment | 2024-04-15
Assessing the potential of nature-based solutions for restoring soil ecosystem services in croplands. Reviews practices capable of rebuilding soil organic matter, water regulation, nutrient cycling, erosion control, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services on agricultural land.
| M. Adil et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2022-09-21
Climate change stress alleviation through nature based solutions: A global perspective. Reviews ecosystem-based approaches that can help plants and agricultural systems withstand drought, heat, salinity, flooding, and other climate-related stresses.
| PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency | PBL | 2020
Agroforestry techniques that address poverty and food insecurity in Kenya. Presents a Kenyan case in which agroforestry practices are used to restore degraded land while improving household food security, resilience, and income.
| Nature-based Solutions Initiative | Nature-based Solutions Initiative | 2018-01-25
The state of knowledge on carbon-sequestration potential of agroforestry systems in Africa. Reviews evidence that African agroforestry systems can store carbon while providing agricultural, livelihood, biodiversity, and ecosystem-service benefits.
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | n.d.
Nature based solutions for restoring agroecosystems, soil and biodiversity. Describes agricultural approaches that restore soil, biodiversity, water cycles, and ecosystem functions while improving resilience and supporting sustainable food production.
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | FAO | n.d.
Agriculture Nature-Based Solutions. Explains how agricultural landscapes can incorporate ecosystem-based practices to improve water management, soil health, food security, climate resilience, and biodiversity.
| PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency | PBL | n.d.
Agroforestry. Describes the integration of trees with crops and livestock as a Nature-Based Solution capable of supporting biodiversity, carbon storage, soil fertility, water regulation, and agricultural livelihoods.
Urban Nature-Based Solutions
| Various authors | Landscape and Urban Planning | 2026-07
Combating heat stress through urban planning: Integrated case studies for Lisbon and Islamabad. Uses contrasting cities to examine how vegetation and other nature-based planning strategies can reduce urban heat exposure and improve thermal resilience.
| Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira | Landscape and Urban Planning | 2025-04-01
Nature in nature-based solutions in urban planning. Examines how concepts of nature are incorporated into urban planning and argues for stronger ecological understanding when designing NbS.
| Hailu Wei et al. | Nature Cities | 2025
Urban cooling and energy-saving effects of nature-based solutions across types and scales. Synthesizes evidence on trees, parks, green roofs, water features, and other urban NbS, quantifying their effects on temperatures and building energy demand.
| Kejing Zhou et al. | npj Urban Sustainability | 2024-04-22
Urban flood risk management needs nature-based solutions: a coupled social-ecological system perspective. Argues that urban flood management should integrate ecological processes, infrastructure, governance, community behavior, and social vulnerability rather than relying only on engineered drainage.
Global mapping of urban nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation. Maps urban NbS initiatives worldwide and finds substantial geographic and socioeconomic inequalities in where projects and reported benefits are concentrated.
| Various authors | Urban Forestry & Urban Greening | 2021
Scaling up nature-based solutions for climate-change adaptation: Potential and benefits in three European cities. Evaluates opportunities to expand urban green infrastructure and examines the adaptation benefits that could result from implementation at larger scales.
| Judy Bush & Andréanne Doyon | Cities | 2019-12
Building urban resilience with nature-based solutions: How can urban planning contribute? Examines how planning systems can mainstream NbS and identifies institutional arrangements needed to move projects from isolated experiments toward citywide resilience strategies.
| Various authors | Environmental Research | 2019-05
Nature-based solutions: Settling the issue of sustainable urbanization. Discusses the growing role of nature in addressing urban environmental problems and links NbS to sustainability, resilience, health, and ecosystem-service planning.
| Christian Albert et al. | Landscape and Urban Planning | 2019-02
Addressing societal challenges through nature-based solutions: How can landscape planning and governance research contribute? Identifies ways spatial planning, landscape science, and governance can improve the design and implementation of multifunctional NbS.
Nature-based solutions for resilient landscapes and cities. Reviews the emerging NbS concept and shows how green infrastructure and ecosystem management can contribute to healthier and more climate-resilient urban regions.
Floods, Drought, Freshwater, and Wastewater
| Juliano Rezende Mudadu Silva & Raphael Braganca Alves Fernandes | Nature-Based Solutions | 2026-06
Nature-based solutions for municipal wastewater treatment: A systematic review on full-scale systems from the last 30 years. Reviews decades of operational experience with constructed wetlands and other nature-based wastewater systems and evaluates their real-world treatment performance.
Multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches to nature-based flood risk management. Argues that effective nature-based flood management requires collaboration among hydrology, ecology, planning, engineering, governance, and local communities.
| K. Molnar-Tanaka & S. Surminski | OECD Development Centre Working Papers | 2024
Nature-based solutions for flood management in Asia and the Pacific. Reviews the use of wetlands, floodplains, mangroves, green infrastructure, and related approaches for managing increasing flood risks across the Asia-Pacific region.
| Long'or Lokidor et al. | Journal of Flood Risk Management | 2024
Nature-Based Solutions for sustainable flood management in East Africa. Reviews the potential for wetlands, vegetation, watershed restoration, and other ecosystem approaches to reduce flood risk across rapidly changing East African landscapes.
| Haiming Wu et al. | Nature Reviews Earth & Environment | 2023-03-14
Constructed wetlands for pollution control. Reviews the mechanisms by which constructed wetlands remove nutrients and contaminants and assesses their applications, environmental benefits, limitations, and future development.
| Carla S.S. Ferreira et al. | Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health | 2023
Wetlands as nature-based solutions for water management in different environments. Reviews how natural and constructed wetlands can manage floods, improve water quality, regulate flows, store carbon, and support biodiversity.
| Various authors | Communications Earth & Environment | 2022
Nature-based solutions in mountain catchments reduce impact of anthropogenic climate change on drought streamflow. Models catchment restoration and finds that ecosystem-based interventions can moderate declining streamflow and reduce drought impacts under climate change.
| Environment Agency | GOV.UK | 2021-06-25
Use nature-based solutions to reduce flooding in your area. Provides practical guidance on using wetlands, floodplain reconnection, woodland, natural river processes, and other measures to slow and store floodwater.
| Various authors | Science of The Total Environment | 2020-07-20
Constructed wetlands for combined sewer overflow treatment: A state-of-the-art review. Evaluates wetlands as lower-impact systems for treating polluted combined sewer overflows while providing additional ecological and landscape benefits.
| World Bank | Global Program on Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience | n.d.
Implementing Nature-based Flood Protection. Provides guidance for incorporating natural systems into flood-risk projects, including assessment, design, economic evaluation, implementation, monitoring, and long-term management.
Coastal and Marine Resilience
Nature-based solutions for climate adaptation in small island developing states: a systematic review. Examines NbS in highly climate-vulnerable island states and identifies benefits, evidence gaps, governance challenges, and conditions needed for equitable implementation.
| Various authors | Elsevier | 2026-01-01
Effectiveness and scalability of coastal nature-based solutions under climate impact drivers: A systematic review. Reviews the performance of coastal NbS under sea-level rise, storms, erosion, and other climate pressures while examining barriers to larger-scale deployment.
| Various authors | Ecological Engineering | 2025-02
Mangrove recovery by habitat restoration using nature-based solutions. Examines habitat-restoration techniques intended to promote mangrove recovery and improve shoreline stability, biodiversity, carbon storage, and coastal resilience.
| Catherine E. Lovelock et al. | Journal of Ecology | 2024
Mangrove ecology guiding the use of mangroves as nature-based solutions. Explains how ecological knowledge of mangrove establishment, growth, geomorphology, and disturbance should guide restoration and coastal-protection projects.
| Various authors | Environmental Evidence | 2024
Evidence on the performance of nature-based solutions interventions for coastal protection in biogenic, shallow ecosystems. Maps evidence for mangroves, salt marshes, reefs, and other coastal habitats used to reduce erosion, waves, and flooding.
| NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science | NOAA | 2023-04-13
Synthesizing evidence on the performance of nature-based solutions for coastal protection. Reviews evidence on how well coastal ecosystems protect communities from waves, erosion, storms, and flooding and identifies remaining knowledge gaps.
| Various authors | Water Science and Engineering | 2022
Mangrove forests as a nature-based solution for coastal flood protection. Reviews the biophysical and ecological factors controlling the ability of mangrove forests to dissipate waves and reduce coastal flood hazards.
| NOAA & U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | NOAA Ocean Service | 2021-09
International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features for Flood Risk Management. Introduces international guidance for combining natural systems with conventional infrastructure to reduce coastal and riverine flood risks.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2016-01-01
Managing Coasts with Natural Solutions. Provides methods for measuring and economically valuing the coastal-protection services supplied by mangrove forests and coral reefs.
| NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science | NOAA | n.d.
Restoration and Nature-Based Solutions. Describes NOAA research on restoring coastal ecosystems and using reefs, wetlands, marshes, living shorelines, and related features to strengthen coastal resilience.
Biodiversity, Climate Adaptation, and Disaster Risk Reduction
| Zeinab Ghaedi, Cristina Santos & Cristina Monteiro | Nature-Based Solutions | 2026-06
Nature-Based solutions, climate change, and biodiversity: A systematic review of opportunities and risks. Synthesizes evidence on interactions between NbS, climate action, and biodiversity while identifying both opportunities for synergy and risks from poorly designed interventions.
| Anita Vollmer & Stefano Ceolotto | Environmental Policy and Governance | 2026-03-11
Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Adaptation: Review of Barriers to Adoption and Guidelines for Policymakers. Identifies regulatory, financial, institutional, knowledge, and social barriers to NbS and proposes policy approaches for accelerating adoption.
| Samuel Abuyeka Tela, Nelly Nambande Masayi & Mugatsia Tsingalia | Frontiers in Climate | 2026
Mitigating and adapting to climate change: the role of nature-based solutions in sustaining vegetation health in the Isiukhu River Basin. Examines ecosystem-based climate responses in a Kenyan river basin and their potential to maintain vegetation condition and landscape resilience.
| Sergio Villamayor-Tomas et al. | Communications Earth & Environment | 2024-04-22
Developing countries can adapt to climate change effectively using nature-based solutions. Analyzes adaptation projects in developing countries and finds that ecosystem-based measures can deliver meaningful benefits when institutional and socioeconomic conditions support implementation.
| Various authors | PLOS Climate | 2024
Harnessing nature-based solutions for economic recovery: A systematic review. Reviews evidence that investments in ecosystems can contribute simultaneously to climate resilience, employment, economic recovery, human well-being, and environmental restoration.
| U. Nehren et al. | Nature-Based Solutions | 2023-12
Towards a typology of nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction. Develops a classification system for ecosystem-based interventions used against different natural hazards and helps clarify how NbS can be incorporated into disaster-risk planning.
| Loan Diep & Timon McPhearson | Nature | 2022-06-21
Nature-based solutions for global climate adaptation. Argues for greater investment in ecosystem-based adaptation while emphasizing that benefits depend on context, inclusive planning, and rigorous evaluation.
| Various authors | Frontiers in Environmental Science | 2022
Biodiversity outcomes of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation: Characterising the evidence base. Reviews how adaptation-focused NbS affect species, habitats, and ecological communities and highlights where biodiversity outcomes remain poorly measured.
| Various authors | Nature Sustainability | 2021
Scientific evidence for ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction. Synthesizes evidence that ecosystems can reduce hazards such as floods, landslides, erosion, storm surges, and heat while providing substantial additional benefits.
| Various authors | International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction | 2020-11
A review of hydro-meteorological hazard, vulnerability, and risk assessment frameworks and indicators in the context of nature-based solutions. Reviews methods for measuring disaster risk and discusses how assessment frameworks can better capture the contribution of NbS.
Governance, Justice, and Implementation
| Kirk B. Enu, Christian Albert & Beate Jessel | Ambio | 2026-07-10
Who leads matters: A governance-informed typology for implementing and scaling nature-based solutions. Shows how different leadership and governance arrangements shape the development, legitimacy, effectiveness, and scalability of NbS projects.
| Juliette G.C. Martin et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025-07
The nature-based solution implementation gap: A review of nature-based solution governance barriers and enablers. Synthesizes governance problems that prevent successful NbS implementation and identifies enabling factors involving institutions, coordination, participation, finance, and long-term management.
| Various authors | Land Use Policy | 2025-04
Bridging NbS and legal literature: Institutional, procedural and substantive barriers to nature-based solutions implementation. Examines how legal systems, planning procedures, property arrangements, regulation, and institutional structures can facilitate or obstruct NbS.
| Various authors | Climate Risk Management | 2025
Beyond individual barriers: a systems approach to understanding and addressing nature-based solutions implementation challenges. Treats implementation problems as interacting parts of larger systems rather than isolated financial, technical, regulatory, or social obstacles.
| Various authors | npj Urban Sustainability | 2025
Rethinking trade-offs in nature-based solutions from a multispecies justice perspective. Expands justice analysis beyond human stakeholders and asks how urban NbS distribute benefits, burdens, space, and survival opportunities among humans and other species.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-12
The role of strategic planning in Nature-based Solutions transformation. Evaluates the Green Cities Framework across six European countries and examines how strategic planning can mainstream NbS into municipal decision-making.
| Various authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024-03
What does it take to renature cities? Uses expert knowledge to identify barriers preventing urban NbS implementation and strategies that governments and other actors can use to overcome them.
| Various authors | npj Urban Sustainability | 2023
Strategies for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in urban governance capacities in ten European cities. Compares city experiences to identify governance capacities and institutional strategies needed to move NbS from pilot projects into routine urban policy.
| R.A. Price | Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office | 2021-07-14
Nature-based Solutions – What are They and What are the Barriers and Enablers to Their Use? Reviews institutional, political, financial, informational, and social factors influencing NbS adoption, particularly within international development and climate policy.
| Various authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 2020
Uptake and implementation of Nature-Based Solutions: An analysis of barriers using Interpretive Structural Modeling. Investigates relationships among barriers to NbS uptake and identifies structural problems that can trigger or reinforce other implementation difficulties.
Economics, Finance, and Valuation
Financing of nature-based solutions for urban stormwater management – a systematic mapping and scoping review. Reviews funding mechanisms for urban stormwater NbS and identifies barriers created by fragmented responsibilities, uncertain revenue streams, and difficulty valuing multiple benefits.
| Various authors | Urban Forestry & Urban Greening | 2026-03
The economic benefits of nature-based solutions: a literature review. Reviews monetary and non-monetary benefits from NbS, including avoided damages, health improvements, ecosystem services, property effects, energy savings, and climate resilience.
| Various authors | Communications Earth & Environment | 2026
A systematic review of nature-positive climate risk transfer and financing instruments. Reviews insurance and financial mechanisms designed to recognize ecosystem protection as a component of climate-risk reduction and resilience investment.
| Alessia Chelli, Luke Brander & Davide Geneletti | Ecosystem Services | 2025-02
Cost-Benefit analysis of urban nature-based solutions. Reviews economic evaluation methods for urban NbS and highlights challenges involved in valuing diverse benefits that occur across different populations, locations, and time scales.
Financing urban Nature-based Solutions: A literature review from the perspective of funders. Analyzes how public, private, and blended finance providers evaluate urban NbS and what limits investment in projects with multiple public benefits.
| L.M. Hüsken et al. | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-12
Money talks. A systems perspective on funding and financing barriers to nature-based solutions. Examines how financial barriers interact with governance, institutional structures, project characteristics, risk perceptions, and fragmented benefit streams.
| Marta Vicarelli et al. | Science of The Total Environment | 2024-10-15
On the cost-effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions for reducing disaster risk. Synthesizes economic evidence comparing NbS with conventional risk-reduction measures and examines when ecosystem-based approaches provide competitive or superior value.
| Chris den Heijer & Tom Coppens | Journal of Environmental Management | 2023-07-01
Paying for green: A scoping review of alternative financing models for nature-based solutions. Reviews innovative financing mechanisms intended to overcome dependence on municipal budgets and unlock broader investment in NbS.
| Austin Thompson | Sustainable Development | 2023-03-02
Paying for nature-based solutions. Reviews ecosystem-service funding and financing mechanisms and examines their implications for social equity, including who receives benefits and who bears project costs.
| Helen Toxopeus & Friedemann Polzin | Journal of Environmental Management | 2021-07-01
Reviewing financing barriers and strategies for urban nature-based solutions. Identifies characteristics of NbS that complicate conventional investment and discusses financial and institutional strategies capable of overcoming those barriers.
Applied Tools, Case Studies, and Emerging Research
| Petra Holden et al. | npj Climate Action | 2026-08-21
Strengthening existing climate services and prioritising new opportunities for nature-based solutions. Examines how climate information and decision-support services can be improved to help communities identify, prioritize, and implement appropriate Nature-Based Solutions.
| Various authors | Landscape and Urban Planning | 2026-08
Urban metabolism as a pathway to advance Nature-based Solutions for climate-resilient cities. Connects NbS with urban flows of energy, water, nutrients, materials, and waste and proposes a systems approach to climate-resilient city planning.
| Various authors | Geography and Sustainability | 2025-12
Effects on heat mitigation, energy use, and carbon savings in urban-scale implementations of nature-based solutions. Quantifies how larger-scale urban NbS can simultaneously reduce heat, building energy consumption, and associated carbon emissions.
| Tara Op de Beeck & Tom Coppens | Ambio | 2025-11-27
Uncovering the governance and financing mechanisms supporting urban nature-based solutions: Case Stiemer Valley, Genk. Uses a Belgian landscape-restoration project to examine how governance arrangements and innovative financing can support long-term urban NbS.
How the World Bank is unlocking nature-based solutions in 100 cities. Describes a global effort to identify opportunities for integrating urban ecosystems into climate-resilience investments and city infrastructure planning.
| Federal Emergency Management Agency | FEMA | 2024-12
Nature-Based Solutions Guide: Floodplains and Wetlands. Provides practical information for communities seeking to use floodplain conservation and wetland restoration to reduce hazards while generating ecological and recreational benefits.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2024-08-23
Kinshasa: Harnessing Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Resilience. Examines how one of Africa's fastest-growing cities is using restored landscapes and green infrastructure to address erosion, flooding, urbanization, and climate risk.
| World Bank | Global Program on Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience | 2024-06-14
The Nature-Based Solutions Opportunity Scan. Presents a geospatial planning tool for identifying locations where ecosystem-based measures may help cities manage flooding, heat, erosion, and other climate hazards.
| European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation | European Commission | 2021
Evaluating the Impact of Nature-based Solutions: A Handbook for Practitioners. Provides indicators, methodologies, and practical approaches for measuring environmental, social, economic, health, resilience, and biodiversity outcomes from NbS projects.
IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions. Explains the launch of the international NbS standard and the need for consistent criteria to distinguish credible ecosystem-based interventions from weak or misleading claims.
Health, Well-Being, and Human Benefits
| Various authors | The Science of Nature | 2026-08
Urban nature-based solutions as public-health infrastructure: a scoping review of implemented interventions. Reviews evaluated parks, greenways, wetlands, vegetated barriers, and blue-green corridors, focusing on measurable health outcomes and reductions in harmful environmental exposures.
| Various authors | Journal of Environmental Psychology | 2026
Effects of greenspace interventions on mental disorders – a systematic review and meta-analysis. Evaluates interventions involving gardens, greenspace, horticulture, and outdoor nature exposure while finding promising but still methodologically limited evidence for treating mental-health disorders.
| Various authors | Sustainable Cities and Society | 2024
Urban heat mitigation by green and blue infrastructure: Drivers, effectiveness, and future needs. Compares cooling from botanical gardens, wetlands, street trees, green walls, balconies, and other nature-based interventions across climates.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2023-12
Green walls and health: An umbrella review. Synthesizes evidence that vegetated walls can reduce surface temperatures, air pollution, and noise, although direct evidence for health outcomes remains comparatively limited.
A systematic review of the impact of green walls on urban comfort: temperature reduction and noise attenuation. Reviews the ability of vertical vegetation to reduce heat and absorb noise while identifying design factors controlling performance.
| Various authors | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | 2022-05
Effect of green wall installation on urban heat island and building energy use: A climate-informed systematic literature review. Examines hundreds of green-wall case studies and finds potential reductions in urban temperatures and building heating and cooling demand.
| Various authors | Urban Forestry & Urban Greening | 2022
Digital placemaking, health & wellbeing and nature-based solutions: A systematic review and practice model. Examines how digital tools and placemaking can encourage engagement with urban green and blue spaces and potentially enhance mental health and community well-being.
| Peter A. Coventry et al. | SSM - Population Health | 2021-12
Nature-based outdoor activities for mental and physical health: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Finds that structured gardening, green exercise, and nature-based therapies can improve depression, anxiety, positive affect, and other mental-health outcomes.
| Various authors | Journal of Mental Health | 2020-04-20
The impact of green spaces on mental health in urban settings: a scoping review. Reviews evidence connecting urban green-space exposure with better mental health while emphasizing the need for stronger longitudinal and experimental evidence.
| Matilda van den Bosch & Åsa Ode Sang | Environmental Research | 2017-10
Urban natural environments as nature-based solutions for improved public health – A systematic review of reviews. Finds strong evidence that urban nature reduces heat and improves affect while examining pathways connecting green environments with cardiovascular and other health outcomes.
Indigenous Knowledge, Community Leadership, and Equity
Harnessing nature-based solutions and indigenous knowledge for community health and climate resilience: A case study of Ondiri Wetland, Kenya. Examines community-led wetland restoration, agroforestry, and greening around an important Nairobi River headwater ecosystem.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2025-12
Indigenous knowledge driven nature-based solutions: findings from an international design competition. Shows how Indigenous worldviews and participatory design can shape culturally appropriate climate adaptation in Oceania.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2025-12
Culturally appropriate nature-based solutions policy settings supporting Indigenous Peoples in Australia—International lessons and applications. Uses international payment-for-ecosystem-services experience to examine policy and financing structures better suited to Indigenous-led NbS.
| Garret Gantner | npj Urban Sustainability | 2025-09-24
Exploring the potential of nature-based solutions in informal settlements upgrading: a transformative approach for Sub-Saharan Africa. Examines participatory, community-scale NbS in Kigali, Nairobi, and other African cities as tools for upgrading informal settlements.
| Mehebub Sahana | Political Geography | 2025-09
Local and indigenous knowledge systems on nature-based solutions: Addressing Green Colonialism in Mangrove restoration of the Indian Sundarbans. Critically examines whether externally driven restoration can marginalize local communities and argues for stronger Indigenous knowledge and decision-making authority.
| Various authors | City and Environment Interactions | 2025-04
Engagement around risk, informality and Nature-based solutions in Nakuru, Kenya. Uses participatory planning in Kaptembwa to explore how NbS can address flooding, heat, safety, livelihoods, and inequalities in informal settlements.
| Various authors | Earth's Future | 2025
Indigenous-Led Nature-Based Solutions Align Net-Zero Emissions and Biodiversity Targets in Canada. Finds that Indigenous-led conservation and stewardship can align carbon, biodiversity, governance, and aspects of Indigenous self-determination.
| Various authors | World Development Sustainability | 2025
Community-led nature-based solutions for enhancing climate change preparedness and resilience in semi-arid environments. Studies Ghana's community resource-management model as a locally led approach to ecosystem stewardship, livelihoods, and climate adaptation.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-12
Working with nature, working with Indigenous knowledge: Community priorities for climate adaptation in Samoa. Connects urban climate adaptation with Samoan ecological knowledge, cultural values, and locally defined concepts of well-being.
| Various authors | Frontiers in Environmental Science | 2024
Centring localised indigenous concepts of wellbeing in urban nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation. Uses cases from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Cook Islands to show how Indigenous understandings of relationships between people, ecosystems, and climate can improve NbS design.
Rivers, Floodplains, and Catchment Restoration
| Various authors | Science of The Total Environment | 2026-01-20
Multiple criteria-based assessment of Nature-based Solutions for flood management: A systematic review. Reviews 92 papers and 132 cases to develop a large set of objectives and criteria for selecting and evaluating flood-management NbS.
| Various authors | Nature Conservation | 2026
Assessing ecosystem services across scales to support nature-based solutions in river floodplains: a review of non-monetary tools. Examines approaches for evaluating floodplain multifunctionality across the Danube, Germany, and Serbia.
| Costanza Carbonari & Luca Solari | Sustainability | 2025-07-03
Riverscape Nature-Based Solutions and River Restoration: Common Points and Differences. Distinguishes river restoration from NbS and discusses floodplain reconnection, bank stabilization, riparian buffers, water quality, and river morphology.
| Kuo-Wei Liao, John Thedy & Chun-Che Tai | Science of The Total Environment | 2024-02-20
Fluvial flood adaptation using nature-based solutions: A comprehensive and effective assessment of hydro-meteorological risks. Models NbS in Taiwan and compares avoided flood damage, ecosystem services, reliability, and costs with conventional engineering.
| Maikel Berg et al. | Science of The Total Environment | 2024
Assessing the IUCN global standard as a framework for nature-based solutions in river flood management applications. Tests whether the IUCN standard can effectively assess process, stakeholder participation, adaptive management, and environmental performance in river flood projects.
| Various authors | Science of The Total Environment | 2023-12-01
Nature-based solutions can help reduce the impact of natural hazards: A global analysis of NBS case studies. Analyzes hundreds of projects involving floods, storms, erosion, and other hazards and examines links with policy and biodiversity goals.
| Shang-Shu Shih, Zhong-Ze Huang & Yao-Wen Hsu | Science of The Total Environment | 2022-12-10
Nature-based solutions on floodplain restoration with coupled propagule dispersal simulation and stepping-stone approach to predict mangrove encroachment in an estuary. Uses ecological and hydrodynamic modeling to guide estuarine floodplain and mangrove restoration.
| M. Tschikof et al. | Science of The Total Environment | 2022
The potential of large floodplains to remove nitrate in river basins – The Danube case. Quantifies how restoring floodplains could improve water quality through nitrate retention and denitrification across a major European river basin.
| Christian Albert et al. | Ambio | 2021-06-08
Planning and governing nature-based solutions in river landscapes: Concepts, cases, and insights. Synthesizes lessons for assessing, planning, governing, and implementing NbS across entire river landscapes.
| Various authors | Science of The Total Environment | 2021-05-20
Embankment lowering and natural self-recovery improves river-floodplain hydro-geomorphic connectivity of a gravel bed river. Documents how targeted levee lowering restored floodplain connectivity on Scotland's River Dee.
Green Roofs, Walls, Rain Gardens, and Urban Stormwater
| Various authors | Ecological Engineering | 2026-05
Multifunctional performance of decentralized stormwater management systems for pollutant reduction, carbon sequestration, and heat mitigation in urban areas. Compares rain gardens, constructed wetlands, and tree-box filters for multiple urban ecosystem services.
| Shahrzad Hamidiaala et al. | Urban Climate | 2026-03
A review of real-time control approaches in nature-based solutions for enhanced stormwater management: Applications in green and blue-green roof systems. Reviews how sensors and automated controls can make vegetated roofs more responsive to changing rainfall and drainage conditions.
| Various authors | Land | 2025-03-29
Sustainable Stormwater Management and Bioretention: An Overview of Reviews of the Last 10 Years. Synthesizes research on rain gardens, green roofs, swales, and constructed wetlands for stormwater treatment and flood management.
| Various authors | Urban Science | 2025
Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Buildings—The Potential of Vertical Greenery. Reviews living walls and green façades for cooling, energy conservation, air-quality improvement, biodiversity, and dense-city applications.
| Jackline Nyamumbo & Silvester Kasuku | Africa Habitat Review | 2025
Green Infrastructure for Urban Resilience: Integrating Nature-Based Solutions into Stormwater Management in Nairobi. Examines rain gardens, permeable surfaces, bioretention, governance barriers, and socioeconomic vulnerability in Nairobi's flood-prone neighborhoods.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-12
Bridging nature and urbanity through green roof resilience framework: A thematic review. Connects green roofs with heat mitigation, stormwater retention, biodiversity, carbon reduction, food production, and human well-being.
| Various authors | Ecological Engineering | 2024-10
Comparative analysis of bioretention design strategies for urban runoff infiltration: a critical overview. Reviews construction and hydrological factors controlling rain-garden performance and stormwater infiltration.
| Various authors | Land | 2024-10
The Application of Rain Gardens in Urban Environments: A Bibliometric Review. Analyzes hundreds of studies examining rain gardens for runoff reduction, pollutant removal, ecological enhancement, and urban water management.
| Various authors | Nature Reviews Earth & Environment | 2024
Concepts and evolution of urban hydrology. Reviews the transformation of urban water systems and highlights rain gardens, decentralized stormwater controls, harvesting, and other nature-based approaches.
| Bruno Augusto et al. | Sustainable Cities and Society | 2020-06
Short and medium- to long-term impacts of nature-based solutions on urban heat. Models how urban green and blue interventions influence heat while also examining longer-term interactions with city density and development.
Drought, Wildfire, Drylands, and Landscape Resilience
| Various authors | iScience | 2026-01-16
A roadmap for nature-based solutions to extreme wildfires. Proposes integrated fire management, close-to-nature forestry, biomass management, green firebreaks, local leadership, and financing strategies for increasingly severe wildfires.
| Andreja Jonoski et al. | Nature-Based Solutions | 2025-12
Model-based design of drought-related climate adaptation strategies using nature-based solutions. Models ditch blocking, infiltration ponds, wetland restoration, and heathland restoration to increase groundwater recharge in a Dutch-Belgian catchment.
| Saskia Keesstra et al. | European Environment Agency | 2025-10-29
Nature-based solutions for fire-resilient European forests. Reviews grazing, agroforestry, rewetting, diversified forests, prescribed burning, and ecological post-fire restoration.
| Saskia Keesstra et al. | European Topic Centre on Climate Change Adaptation | 2024-12-13
Nature-based Solutions to address forest disturbances under climate change: the case of fire and pests. Examines strategies for preventing, responding to, and recovering from wildfire and pest disturbances in European forests.
| UNCCD, ELD Initiative & United Nations University | UNCCD | 2024-12-02
Economics of drought — investing in nature-based solutions for drought resilience. Makes the economic case for watershed restoration, reforestation, sustainable grazing, improved soils, and other approaches that increase water retention.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-12
Nature-based solutions for water resource management in Africa's arid and semi-arid lands: A systematic review of existing interventions. Reviews water harvesting, conservation agriculture, agroforestry, soil-moisture management, and community participation across African drylands.
| Various authors | Environmental Science & Policy | 2024-11
History of ‘nature-based’ solutions to land degradation in the savannahs of Kenya. Uses historical records from Baringo and Kitui to compare earlier land-restoration interventions with modern NbS principles and governance standards.
| Various authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 2024-02-14
The underexposed nature-based solutions: A critical state-of-art review on drought mitigation. Finds drought-related NbS research considerably less developed than flood research and stresses the need for larger-scale implementation and better effectiveness measurements.
| Giuseppe Bombino et al. | Land | 2024-02-14
A Nature-Based Approach Using Felled Burnt Logs to Enhance Forest Recovery Post-Fire and Reduce Erosion Phenomena in the Mediterranean Area. Tests contour-positioned burnt logs as a low-cost intervention for slowing runoff and erosion during post-fire forest recovery.
| Chris Magero et al. | IUCN | 2024
Restoring ecosystems to reduce drought risk: Nature-based Solutions for drought. Provides guidance and case studies for integrating ecosystem restoration into proactive drought-risk policies.
Marine and Coastal Nature-Based Solutions
| Phoebe Weston | The Guardian | 2026-08-25
How getting farmers, fishers and beavers together could save a Cornish river. Reports on a source-to-sea restoration effort using farm runoff controls, trees, beavers, seagrass protection, and collaborative catchment management to improve the River Fal ecosystem.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2026-04-01
A Catalogue of Nature-Based Solutions for Coastal Resilience. Catalogues ecosystem-based and hybrid approaches for addressing sea-level rise, coastal erosion, storms, and flooding while protecting coastal biodiversity.
| Various authors | Frontiers in Marine Science | 2026
Coastal protection services provided by nature-based solutions: artificial and natural reefs. Reviews coral, oyster, artificial, and hybrid reef systems as alternatives or complements to conventional breakwaters and seawalls.
| Paulina Filz et al. | Nature-Based Solutions | 2025-12
Coastal resilience could be enhanced by co-interventions and synergistic Nature-based Solutions. Reviews marine NbS and argues that restoration, livelihoods, local management, financing, and social safeguards must be developed together.
| Curt D. Storlazzi et al. | Science Advances | 2025-01-15
Hybrid coral reef restoration can be a cost-effective nature-based solution to provide protection to vulnerable coastal populations. Models reef restoration in Florida and Puerto Rico and finds substantial potential reductions in flooding, property losses, and risk to vulnerable residents.
| Vítor H. Oliveira et al. | Science of The Total Environment | 2025-01
Transplantation of seagrass (Zostera noltei) as a potential nature-based solution for the restoration of historically contaminated mudflats. Demonstrates successful establishment of transplanted seagrass in a polluted estuarine environment and evaluates ecological recovery over two years.
Shifting sands: The influence of coral reefs on shoreline erosion from short-term storm protection to long-term disequilibrium. Examines the complex relationship between reefs, waves, sediment transport, erosion, and coastal protection.
| James A.G. Forrester et al. | Ecological Engineering | 2024-09
Seagrass as a nature-based solution for coastal protection. Models how seagrass can reduce wave energy and complement salt-marsh restoration and engineered coastal defenses.
| Husen Rifai et al. | Ambio | 2023-03
Potential of seagrass habitat restorations as nature-based solutions: Practical and scientific implications in Indonesia. Evaluates seagrass restoration against NbS principles and highlights benefits for blue carbon, fisheries, sediment stability, and local communities.
| Various authors | Nature-based Solutions Initiative | 2018
Coral reefs for coastal protection: A new methodological approach and engineering case study in Grenada. Describes an engineered ecological reef-restoration project designed specifically to reduce shoreline erosion and flooding.
Monitoring, Indicators, Evaluation, and Scaling
| Buddhi Dayananda | Sustainability | 2026-05-12
Nature-Based Solutions for Environmental Management: A Comprehensive Review of Effectiveness, Co-Benefits, and Monitoring. Synthesizes evidence on water, floods, heat, biodiversity, carbon, trade-offs, equity, and practical monitoring approaches.
Exploring nature-based solutions’ effectiveness indicators for climate change adaptation: a systematic review. Reviews indicators used to assess coastal NbS and finds environmental measures far more common than social and economic indicators.
| Timon McPhearson et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2025-07-14
Global synthesis and regional insights for mainstreaming urban nature-based solutions. Synthesizes international experience to identify patterns, regional differences, and strategies for embedding NbS into ordinary urban planning and governance.
| Martina van Lierop et al. | Ambio | 2025-04-22
The why, how, and what of indicator-based monitoring of nature-based solutions: Perspectives from EU and LAC city practitioners. Examines how European and Latin American cities choose and use indicators and identifies practical barriers to long-term monitoring.
| Various authors | Frontiers in Environmental Science | 2025
From grey literature to peer-reviewed evidence: bridging the monitoring gap of nature-based solutions for Kenya’s water resources. Calls for standardized indicators, open data, long-term monitoring, living laboratories, and stronger integration of Kenya's extensive project-level evidence.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2024-12
The conceptual quantitative assessment framework for Nature-based Solutions. Proposes a step-by-step quantitative framework for evaluating NbS performance rather than relying only on qualitative descriptions.
| Clare Adams et al. | Land Use Policy | 2023-07
Mainstreaming nature-based solutions in cities: A systematic literature review and a proposal for facilitating urban transitions. Reviews 147 studies and proposes a framework explaining how actors, institutions, and knowledge can embed NbS into routine urban decision-making.
| Various authors | Urban Forestry & Urban Greening | 2022-08
Urban transitions towards Nature-based Solutions. Examines how city-scale transitions can move NbS beyond isolated demonstration projects toward broader transformations of urban socio-ecological systems.
| Various authors | Urban Forestry & Urban Greening | 2022-07
Nature-based solutions for changing urban landscapes: Lessons from Australia. Draws lessons from Australian cities on adapting NbS concepts to planning, water-sensitive design, climate resilience, and changing urban landscapes.
| Various authors | Science of The Total Environment | 2021-09-15
A new evaluation framework for nature-based solutions projects based on the application of performance questions and indicators approach. Identifies roughly 130 indicators covering participation, governance, economics, trade-offs, spatial scale, local suitability, and long-term effectiveness.
International Policy, Institutions, and Climate Planning
| United Nations Development Programme | UNDP Climate Promise | 2025-08-15
Why nature-based solutions are critical for climate change adaptation. Examines increasing incorporation of NbS into national adaptation plans and climate commitments, with examples from Bhutan, Cuba, Ethiopia, Laos, and Senegal.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2025-07-10
Mobilizing Nature-Based Solutions for Disaster and Climate Resilience. Reviews more than a decade of World Bank investments in wetlands, forests, urban green space, mangroves, river systems, and hybrid green-gray infrastructure.
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | 2024-04-18
A Decade of Ecosystem-based Adaptation: Lessons from the United Nations Environment Programme. Synthesizes lessons from more than a decade of ecosystem-based climate adaptation projects across multiple countries and ecosystems.
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | 2023
Intergovernmental Consultations on Nature-Based Solutions. Explains the internationally negotiated process following UNEA's adoption of the first multilaterally agreed definition of Nature-Based Solutions.
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | 2022-10-12
Nature-based Solutions: Opportunities and Challenges for Scaling Up. Reviews international commitments, conceptual debates, implementation issues, and actions needed from governments, businesses, and civil society.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2022-05-19
Climate Explainer: Nature-Based Solutions. Introduces how forests, agriculture, wetlands, river restoration, and other ecosystems can contribute to both mitigation and adaptation.
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | 2021-01-14
Adaptation Gap Report 2020. Assesses global progress on climate adaptation with a major focus on the role, financing, implementation, and scaling of Nature-Based Solutions.
Scaling up Nature-based Solutions to Tackle Water-related Climate Risks. Uses Mexico and the United Kingdom to examine policy, regulatory, governance, financial, and technical barriers preventing wider NbS implementation.
| OECD | OECD Environment Policy Papers | 2020-07-29
Nature-based solutions for adapting to water-related climate risks. Reviews why conventional decision systems may undervalue NbS and proposes policy reforms for flood and drought adaptation.
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | n.d.
Overview of Nature-based solutions. Connects the UN definition of NbS with biodiversity, land restoration, water quality, pollution reduction, climate resilience, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Africa, Asia, and Global South Implementation
| United Nations Development Programme | UNDP Malaysia | 2026-07-22
Nature-based Solutions and Nature Financing: Towards Blended Structures for Climate Adaptation in Malaysia. Examines blended finance, biodiversity investment, subnational funding, and pathways for turning conservation priorities into investable NbS projects.
| Joseph Kimani et al. | CLARE | 2025-12-10
Building a more climate-resilient community in urban Kenya through nature-based solutions. Describes community-led adaptation planning in Mathare emphasizing Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, housing, vulnerability assessment, and locally owned solutions.
| Michael Osei Asibey et al. | Cities | 2025-12
Nature where we live: Receptivity to context-sensitive nature-based solutions in African cities. Studies NbS awareness and acceptance in formal and informal neighborhoods of Kumasi, Ghana and identifies cost, space, maintenance, and knowledge barriers.
| World Bank & World Resources Institute | World Bank | 2025-02-19
WRI and the World Bank Present Landmark Assessment of Nature-Based Solutions in Africa. Summarizes an assessment of nearly 300 Sub-Saharan African projects addressing drought, floods, heat, ecosystem loss, employment, and social equity.
| Kenya National Commission for UNESCO | KNATCOM | 2025
Strengthening capacity for Nature-Based Solutions in the Mount Kenya–Lewa Biosphere Reserve. Describes community initiatives addressing climate change, biodiversity, water scarcity, food security, health, employment, and ecosystem restoration.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2025
Nature-based solutions for resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: where do we stand and what is needed? Uses cases from Chad, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Rwanda to examine opportunities and barriers to scaling resilience-focused NbS.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2025
NBS Invest: Accelerating Nature Based Solutions in Least Developed Countries. Describes efforts to build NbS investment capacity, project pipelines, training, and climate-finance access in developing countries.
| Various authors | Nature-Based Solutions | 2023-12
Treatment wetlands in Embera indigenous communities (Colombia), are they Nature-based Solutions? Evaluates decentralized wetland sanitation for Indigenous communities while asking how such systems align with broader NbS social and ecological criteria.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2023
Technical Deep Dive: Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience. Covers planning, design, community engagement, finance, and implementation of urban and riverine NbS in developing-country contexts.
| Eileen Mairena Cunningham & Dennis Mairena Araúz | FAO / Tebtebba | 2020
Nature-based solutions for climate change: a vision from indigenous peoples. Places contemporary NbS within much older traditions of Indigenous stewardship and argues that Indigenous rights, knowledge, territories, and governance must be central to implementation.
Forest-Water Systems, Ecosystem-Based Adaptation, and Practical Applications
| United Nations Environment Programme | UNEP | 2026
Mountains ADAPT. Supports locally led ecosystem restoration, water retention, and climate-smart agriculture projects designed to strengthen climate resilience in vulnerable mountain regions.
| Environment Agency | GOV.UK | 2026
Taking action: water for the environment. Promotes catchment restoration, wetlands, healthier soils, groundwater recharge, and other NbS for drought, water scarcity, flooding, and ecological recovery.
| Stella Apostolaki | Nature-Based Solutions / FAO AGRIS | 2025
Nature-based solutions: From flood defense to addressing water scarcity and climate change risks. Examines how sustainable drainage and rainwater-management systems can shift from primarily flood control toward water storage, reuse, and drought resilience.
| World Bank | World Bank | 2023-05-22
Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience. Provides practical economic valuation approaches and case studies for comparing ecosystem-based projects with conventional infrastructure investments.
| Brenden Jongman & Sally Judson | World Bank Blogs | 2023-03-29
Nature-based solutions for climate resilience are catching on in World Bank projects: Less gray, more green and blue. Reviews the rapid expansion of World Bank projects combining forests, wetlands, reefs, rivers, grasslands, urban green infrastructure, and conventional engineering.
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | FAO | 2021-12-31
A guide to forest–water management. Explains how forests regulate water quality, quantity, erosion, flood risk, and watershed resilience and presents the economic case for forest-based natural infrastructure.
| Boris van Zanten et al. | World Bank Blogs | 2021-11-11
Can we help nature bounce back? Realizing the benefits of nature-based solutions for climate resilience. Uses mangroves and other ecosystems to explain why restored natural infrastructure can adapt, protect communities, support livelihoods, and maintain biodiversity.
Guidelines for Integrating Ecosystem-based Adaptation into National Adaptation Plans. Provides practical methods for incorporating ecosystem restoration and management into national climate-adaptation planning.
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | FAO | 2019
Unasylva 251 - Forests: nature-based solutions for water. Explores forests as natural infrastructure supplying freshwater, regulating flows, filtering pollutants, protecting soils, and supporting water security.
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | FAO | n.d.
Forest and Water Programme. Brings together research and practical guidance on managing forests and trees as Nature-Based Solutions for water quality, watershed protection, erosion control, and climate resilience.
