Mitigating Impacts Through Nature-Based Solutions
"Nature-Based Solutions are a fundamental part of action for climate and biodiversity. Authoritative research indicates that Nature-Based Solutions can provide over one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed ...They value harmony between people and nature, as well as ecological development and represent a holistic, people-centered response to climate change. They are effective, long-term, cost-efficient and globally scalable." United Nations Global Compact in the 2019 Climate Action Summit
Nature has evolved in ways that buffer storms and adapt to change. Many of the most effective strategies to address the impacts of climate change are based on those natural systems. Many of the impacts we are facing are exacerbated by the ways we have changed the natural landscape and reduced the effectiveness of nature's tools. Impermeable surfaces, loss and disconnection of wetlands and floodplains, fragmentation of the landscape, barriers to the movement of wildlife, loss of forests and meadows, and many more human changes exacerbate the impacts of a warming climate. By actions such as increasing infiltration, slowing the flow of stormwater, reconnecting the landscape, conserving and managing our forests and meadows, and re-creating a more resilient environment, we can not only buffer impacts but also create an environment better adapted to the future.
Nature-based solutions (NBS), sometimes referred to as green infrastructure, can include rain gardens that can mimic wetlands to absorb stormwater run-off from paved surfaces, preventing flooding of roadways and filtering water before it flows into adjacent streams. NBS can also include removal of invasive plants and restoration of native vegetation, pocket forests and parks, removal of impervious surfaces, and more. These solutions not only reduce polluted runoff and improve water quality, they also improve access to greenspaces, reduce heat-islands within a community, enhance biodiversity, and improve air quality.
Some Nature-Based Solutions also directly address climate change by sequestering and storing carbon in forests, meadows and wetlands. If we let forests mature, become old growth, and manage them for carbon storage and other ecosystem values and services (e.g. water supplies, biodiversity, forest products); if we plant meadows and adopt agricultural practices that store more carbon in the soil; and if we use the knowledge that science has provided, we can make a real difference to climate change in our watershed while creating a more ecologically viable and sustainable future.
Many Nature-Based Solutions can work at different scales, from global programs to actions that individuals can take. Some create ecologic or hydrologic resilience while also removing atmospheric carbon and storing it not only in plant materials, but also in the soil, thereby reducing the overall impacts of climate change.
The idea behind Nature-Based Solutions is to mimic the way that our natural ecosystems such as wetlands,
forests, and prairies naturally manage rainwater and nurture biodiversity.
(BREC, https://www.brec.org/green-infrastructure#whatis)
