2018 UN World Water Development Report released ahead of World Water Day
SIWI’s contribution highlights nature-based solutions as a cost-effective tool for addressing water challenges, however, changes in regulatory frameworks are needed before they can be fully mainstreamed.
SIWI’s contribution highlights nature-based solutions as a cost-effective tool for addressing water challenges, however, changes in regulatory frameworks are needed before they can be fully mainstreamed.
The report, Nature-based Solutions for Water, seeks to inform policy and decision-makers, inside and outside the water community, about the potential of nature-based solutions (NBS) to address contemporary water management challenges across all sectors; particularly regarding water for agriculture, sustainable cities, disaster risk reduction and water quality.
The UNDP-SIWI Water Governance Facility led the writing of the penultimate chapter of the report, Enabling Uptake of Nature Based Solutions, which highlighted key challenges and priority actions to enable effective design, development, financing and implementation of NBS worldwide.
The chapter argues that NBS can be cost-effective and do not necessarily require additional financial resources but usually involve redirecting and making more effective use of existing financing. However, as the vast majority of current regulatory and legal environments for water management were developed largely with grey-infrastructure approaches in mind this process can be difficult. Much can be achieved by promoting NBS more effectively through existing frameworks by identifying where and how NBS can support existing planning approaches at different levels. The development and implementation of common criteria against which both NBS and other options for water resources management can be assessed (e.g. green versus grey solutions) is a critical component to their mainstreaming within current planning and management practices.
The findings of the report will be presented in Stockholm at SIWI’s World Water Day Seminar: Nature Based Solutions for Water on March 22; held in conjunction with over 30 regional launches of the report held in different cities worldwide.
