GOVERNMENT

Who this page is for

This entry point is for the people in public authorities who have to decide whether a Nature Based Solution is worth supporting, and who will be answerable for the decision. That includes water and city planners, regional and catchment authorities, national ministries and the agencies that administer funding programmes for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

The situation this page assumes is the usual one: an obligation exists — a flood risk management plan, a water quality deadline, an adaptation commitment — the budget is constrained, and a proposal for a natural intervention has arrived without the kind of evidence the appraisal process is built to accept. The material collected here is the part of the guide that addresses that situation.

Start here

General methodological framework for the economic assessment of NBS — the framework that organises an assessment so that it produces the result an appraisal requires, from the definition of the counterfactual to the presentation of the result.

Institutional analysis — the method for establishing which bodies hold the relevant powers, what instruments they have, and where a responsibility exists without the means to discharge it. This is frequently what determines whether a proposal can proceed at all.

Readiness approach for NBS implementation — the check of whether a proposed measure can actually be delivered, covering the technical, institutional, financial and social conditions that have to hold.

Natural assurance schemes and the NAS canvas — how the value a measure creates is captured by a beneficiary who can be asked to contribute, and what arrangements have worked elsewhere.

The rest of the guide for this audience

The uptaking and impact section addresses the barriers that are specific to public authorities: how Nature Based Solutions sit in European and national policy, what the insurance systems of nine European countries can and cannot support, and what the project recommends to the actors who set the conditions. The economic damage costs and life cycle costs pages give the two conventions an appraisal will be judged against.

Where a decision has to be taken under deep uncertainty — a long horizon, a changing baseline, several possible futures — adaptive planning sets out how to sequence reversible decisions and identify in advance the triggers that would change the plan.

For a reader who wants to see the whole sequence applied rather than described, each of the nine demonstration areas is presented from its problem to its proposed arrangement, in settings that range from a large national basin to a single city district.