The not so Black and White of Grey Infrastructures

Bret Dannis, Anne Hughes & Zipora Otieno

Flooded agricultural field in central Illinois, no wetland or levees to protect this field, resulting in agricultural losses (photo credit Anne Hughes)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720300620

Did you know that people who spend time walking in the forests experience decreased stress hormone levels which can help relieve heart conditions, respiratory illnesses and high blood pressure? Think about the next global pandemic or a climate crisis that we could avoid if we peacefully co-existed with nature. Would a human-engineered dam (grey infrastructure) generate these additional benefits? Now, imagine that the world loses forests the size of a football field every three seconds due to human activities! Unless urgent measures are taken to reverse this trend, we are headed for a global catastrophe. Therefore the time to act is NOW, and Nature based solutions (NbS) provide a sustainable and scalable way to address this problem.

But What are Nature-based Solutions and Why Do They Matter?

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), NbS are interventions that use nature and the natural functions of healthy ecosystems to address the most pressing challenges of our time. They are solutions that protect biodiversity while providing economic and social benefits. Creating wetlands, connected to rivers, to diffuse the flood waters instead of man-made dams, is just one example of nature-based innovations that can improve the quality of life for everyone utilizing those waters, both humans and wildlife.

Grey infrastructures are permanent or semi-permanent, human-engineered, unnatural structures such as “dikes,” “levees,” “drain tiles,” and “water treatment plants.”

The NbS is the grass covered levee (photo credit US Army) compared to the man made concrete and steel dam (photo credit Global Trade Review)

A reconstructed wetlands (photo credit Anne Hughes) is the NbS option here for water filtration versus the water treatment plant (photo credit water operator hq)

The Not-So-Rosy Reality of Assessing Nature-based Solutions.

So far so good, you might assume. We have a new super-hero in town and a silver bullet-Nature based Solutions (NbS) that offer the potential to tackle climate change but can do so while protecting biodiversity and addressing multiple sustainability challenges. But is this the reality? Well, if we continue packaging NbS in a super-hero cloak, we have already lost the battle of tackling one of the grave challenges facing humanity today-climate change. A synthesis of available evidence shows that NbS are far from perfect. While NbS has gained a lot of traction in financial investments, this is not the case for research. There is a scarcity of studies on NbS in general, but more so on their effectiveness. Secondly, a commonly overlooked aspect of NbS is stakeholders’ perceptions. NbS benefits can be perceived differently across different stakeholder groups. These differences shape and influence the values people attach to NbS and ultimately their motivation to adopt it or not. Failure to account for these variations may lead to under- or overvaluation of benefits, incorrect policy prescriptions, and implementation bottlenecks. It is within this context that a team of researchers embarked on a journey to develop and test an innovative methodology for assessing NbS effectiveness and for detecting and analyzing trade-offs between beneficiaries.

What they did

The researchers first developed cognitive maps which allow the integration of multiple stakeholder perspectives and scenario development. Different stakeholders were asked about their perceptions and values regarding critical aspects of a particular NbS for flood risk management. The individual cognitive maps were then aggregated and used to analyze potential trade-offs.

What they found

In this case study of governments, local landowners, and conservation groups, it was found that socioeconomic benefits need to be clearly portrayed to all the stakeholders to improve involvement in implementing NbS. In other words, everyone needs to play well together to reach everybodies goals. Groups trying to create more restored and improved wildlife habitats need to consider the effects on the local agricultural industry and groups such as eco-tourism, the general community, and those who fish and hunt. Changes in water flow, height, and quality affect everyone that uses those waterways for food, shelter, and industry. The most innovative aspect of this transition to NbS is clear and understandable communication with all parties impacted by risks.

The width and direction of the arrows indicate the stakeholder connections.

Problems

Although this research found important factors that influence the effectiveness of NbS, there are some potential limitations that could lower the study's accuracy. Because the study is based on the perceptions of different stakeholder groups, each group's willingness to participate is essential. In order to get inputs from the stakeholders, they had to go through several processes of individual input phases as well as group discussion sessions. For this reason, the stakeholder's willingness to participate may be associated with their level of interest in NbS. Another potential limitation within this study is the inability of the Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) methodologyto account for NbS effectiveness at larger spatial scales. The FCMs methodology is designed to make assessments at the local scale and does not accurately account for trade-offs happening across locations. If methods are designed to account for larger spatial scales we may form a better understanding of the co-benefit perceptions amongst NbS stakeholder groups.

What Now

Co-benefit perceptions from different stakeholder groups can be used to form more accurate assessments of NbS as well as the policies that influence these locations. On a larger scale, these findings can influence society's ability to coincide with the natural world. If a better understanding of NbS is formed, we can create areas that benefit society, protect biodiversity, maintain ecosystem services, and mitigate the effects of climate change. Think about this: how else can we promote NbS as a valid alternative to grey infrastructures-i.e., human-engineered climate change solutions- if we do not pay attention to stakeholder perceptions and views? In any case, who are we designing these solutions for?

Reference:

Giordano, R., Pluchinotta, I., Pagano, A., Scrieciu, A., & Nanu, F. (2020). Enhancing nature-based solutions acceptance through stakeholders' engagement in co-benefits identification and trade-offs analysis. Science of the Total Environment, 713, 136552.