The water we use every day is directly dependent on the landscapes through which it flows.
Our watersheds— the lands around rivers, lakes, and streams—are some of the most undervalued natural systems on Earth. Restoring the health and resiliency of our watersheds is of urgent concern but we know it’s achievable. By investing in NbS we can improve water security, restore biodiversity, enhance communities’ resilience to climate change, and promote equitable, inclusive development. Grey and Sadoff (2007) specifically define water security as
The availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems, and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments, and economies.
Figure 1. Diagram of Water Security (The Resilient Water Accelerator 2021). Societies can enjoy water security when they successfully manage their water resources and services to meet the needs of people and ecosystems over the long-term.
Nature-Based Solutions for Water Security
Increased focus on investments that provide multiple benefits has spurred interest in alternatives to traditional water security approaches, such as grey infrastructure, that fail to take a systems approach (Palmer et al. 2015). In response, the term Nature-based Solutions (NbS) was coined by IUCN to encompass “actions to protect, sustainably use, manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems, which address societal challenges, effectively and adaptively, providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits” (Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016). From the perspective of delivering water security benefits, NbS measures can connect watershed stakeholders including upstream users, land use patterns, and biophysical functions of associated ecosystems. Such Nature-based Solutions for Water Security (NbS-WS), include:
“Actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address water security challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human wellbeing and biodiversity benefits.” (Tremolet et al, 2019)
Figure 1 offers a schematic outlining the dimensions of water security to be considered.
NbS Approach Multiple Potential Benefits
For more information about the common nature-based solutions included in Figure 2, the NbS Special Topics page includes Factsheets for each including a description of the NbS, water security challenges addressed and the depth of evidence base, common co-benefits of the NbS, common risks and tradeoffs, monitoring opportunities, implementations costs, timing of benefits, and more.
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