The project started asking some questions, and now, after more than 3 years, NAIAD provides some new insights:
i) in a context of climate change and land-use change plus and increase of asset values and distributions, the level of losses is increasing significantly, posing a challenge to governments, cities, the insurance sector and citizens. Are NBS the solution? Can the design of natural assurance schemes better prepare and avoid potential costs? On the evidence from our results, all these questions have a positive answer.
ii) NAIAD demonstrates that NBS are an important part of the portfolio of risk reduction, increasing the resilience of the system while providing additional societal co-benefits. However equally NBS are not a silver bullet, sometimes a combination of NBS with other measures, including grey solutions could be the best option. Therefore, the answer to how we best develop locally adapted solutions in catchments and urban areas is through a systematic approach to implement and deliver real evidence on NAS and by revisiting existing evidence. What is clear is a revised paradigm benefits from bringing in multi-disciplinarity to better understand the nature of what are inherently complex problems. Here the correct integration of knowledge (and disciplines) is key, which is ideally suited to the properties of nature-based solutions, that are inherently multifunctional. Our simulations also seem to indicate that NBS will be particularly well suited to frequent events, rather than the most extreme, thus increasing the overall resilience of the system. In prevention, we saw that NBS display their highest assurance value at the prevention stage against extreme events but also against more frequent events related to water risks.
iii) the possibility of evaluating NBS and NAS will facilitate the incorporation of these solutions in River Basin Management, River Restoration Plans, flood and drought risk planning and, therefore, the mobilization of resources for their financing, as part of an adaptive management cycle that shifts the focus earlier into the risk management cycle towards prevention.
Finally, one important insight learnt in the process was to identify the specific barriers, namely the different risk perceptions and ambiguity between the different stakeholders in the uptake of NBS as a latent opportunity for their uptake. The mobilization of collective action to deliver risk prevention and reduction will be central and what until now were bundled as “transaction costs” need instead to be “unbundled” and understood for their enormous potential to help deliver collective action for risk reduction tapping in the value of nature for increased resilience and prevention.
NAIAD cookbook- How to do a Natural Assurance scheme:
1.UNDERSTAND the underlying conceptual frame of what is natural assurance.
2.CHOOSE the NAS tools, methods and co-design processes that best suit your needs,
3.TEST their applications in a demonstration site,
4.DEVELOP the business models and financing schemes necessary for the adoption and mainstreaming of your “natural assurance schemes”
5.IMPLEMENT your NAS ensuring that you MONITOR and EVALUATE the main avoided damages from water risks and the associated co-benefits,
6.SHARE your experience with others so that these learnings are transferable across all of Europe and beyond
