Nature-based solutions (NbS) are engineering actions that address societal challenges through the creation, protection, sustainable management and/or restoration of ecosystems, benefitting both the environment and human wellbeing. One of the most frequently purported co-benefits of NbS is their ability to simultaneously benefit, and even restore, biodiversity and ecosystem health while accomplishing their infrastructure goals.
However, the scientific literature and mainstreaming efforts surrounding NbS are often in short supply of an important puzzle piece: evidence that they benefit biodiversity the way we say they do.
Despite studies showing the gaps between NbS theory and NbS performance, scientific works showing concrete links between biodiversity conservation and NbS actions are still limited.
In a new publication from the Biodiversity Working Group of the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN), conservation scientists, ecologists, practitioners and engineers from several N-EWN partner organizations present their recommendations for enhancing biodiversity in NbS implementation, based on their diverse experiences and expertise in different ecological and engineering systems.
The paper argues that biodiversity is a critical component of NbS, and therefore that the biodiversity outcomes of an NbS project are directly related to the biodiversity gains–or losses–that occur.
Why do we want biodiverse NbS features?
- To keep ecosystem processes flowing: Diverse microbes in the soil help filter water and cycle nutrients, diverse bird species ensure wide dispersal of different tree and plant seeds, and communities with more species ensure food webs continue cycling from primary producer to predator.
- To provide resilience to ecosystems and their populations: More diverse species and more diverse genetics within species give entire communities of vegetation and wildlife enhanced ability to stand up to diseases, environmental disturbances like drought, and more.
- To ensure stability and efficiency: Biodiversity also means structural integrity– the complex ways that species overlap and support each other in the environment also benefits the infrastructure we put within them. Having multiple species that overlap in function provides ecosystems with a kind of fail-safe: every job will get done.
- To save on maintenance and monitoring: Ecosystems more resilient to disturbances also take less work to fix when a storm blows through, and species facilitate each other in ways that make it easier to establish new projects and efforts to monitor their condition.
- Biodiversity itself is worth protecting: One of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) criteria for a project being a nature-based solution is the enhancement of ecosystems and biodiversity– protecting species for species’ sake, not just for the benefits they provide our infrastructure.
Through NbS, we have the potential to provide both infrastructure services and biodiversity benefits. The authors of this paper argue that the biodiversity component can be integrated into the entire process of designing, implementing and managing an NbS, making it more successful at both goals.
“The paper spun up rather organically from regular conversations that the Biodiversity Working Group was holding via Zoom,” said Charles van Rees, who led the paper. “There was a general agreement that there wasn’t enough ecology in the NbS literature, and where it did appear, it was superficial. Others in the group also rightly pointed out that what we needed was concrete, practical recommendations and guidelines, not just theory. So we spent a long time thinking through ideas that bridged the two.”
Following virtual scoping conversations in 2024 and 2025, the biodiversity working group built a combined annotated bibliography (a lot of papers, with a lot of notes!) to explore ecological mechanisms that could be leveraged to enhance biodiversity in NbS features, monitoring techniques for biodiversity in NbS, the role of species interactions, habitat quality, ecosystem management and more, all relevant to NbS implementation.
Through this research, they present eight recommendations for enhancing biodiversity in NbS planning, design, implementation, monitoring and maintenance:
- Assess both habitat quantity and quality from a life-history perspective,
- Preserve or design for habitat heterogeneity across scales,
- Incorporate local biodiversity dynamics into connectivity planning and organization,
- Plan and design for different scales and dimensions of biodiversity,
- Consider unexpected ecological outcomes for and from biodiversity,
- Leverage species interactions for cost efficiency, resilience, and conservation performance,
- Frame biodiversity monitoring as asset monitoring, and finally,
- Treat ecological management as maintenance.
Biodiversity is a complex and multidimensional characteristic of ecosystems that drives and maintains ecological function. Ecological dynamics are complex, and because of that, NbS don’t always behave as straightforwardly as traditional infrastructure might.
While NbS hold a lot of on-paper potential for both infrastructure and environmental problems, experts in ecology and conservation biology are needed to guide the conversation to accomplish both goals in the real world. The Network’s Biodiversity Working Group is aiming to help fill this gap.
Check out the full paper here.
Authorship: Charles van Rees (University of Georgia), Collin VanBuren (VA Museum of Natural History), Lori Han (University of Oklahoma), Andrew Altieri (University of Florida), Matt Bilskie (University of Georgia), James Byers (University of Georgia), Jon Calabria (University of Georgia), Matt Chambers (University of Georgia), Daniel Coleman (University of Georgia), Katie Foster (University of Georgia), Aliza Leit (ECOncrete), Alec Nelson (University of Georgia), Christopher Streb (Biohabitats), Burton Suedel (US Army Corps of Engineers), Seth Wenger (University of Georgia) and Brock Woodson (University of Georgia).
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