Unlocking Nature's Potential – NBS and Business

Abstract

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly seen as a holistic approach to a wide array of environmental and societal problems. Crucially, much of its appeal stems from its potential to address multiple challenges at once, being not only valuable for their positive impacts toward sustainability and human welfare but also their cost-effectiveness when compared to some engineered solutions. This helps to explain the growing awareness of the private sector of the market opportunities arising from the introduction of NBS to their operations. This chapter presents some of the opportunities for businesses in implementing NBS, such as the risk and cost reductions, compliance with regulatory requirements, reputational and financial gains, among others. I will also introduce some of the challenges they might face, such as the difficulties for companies to fully internalizing all benefits generated by investing in NBS, the need for long-term planning in adapting NBS in a company's operations, possible hindrances in financing innovative NBS, among others. The chapter will also showcase NBS being implemented by companies in urban contexts, based on the responses of local governments that disclose to CDP's cities questionnaire. This concluding section of the chapter provides policy recommendations for public entities to incentivize the uptake of NBS by the private sector.

Citation

Rosa da Conceição, H. and Finlay, H. (2021), "Unlocking Nature's Potential – NBS and Business", Croci, E. and Lucchitta, B. (Ed.) Nature-Based Solutions for More Sustainable Cities – A Framework Approach for Planning and Evaluation, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 279-288. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-636-720211023