Mainstreaming urban nature-based solutions in India

Challenges of urbanization and changes to the environment

With high level of conversion of natural open areas into hard paved built-up areas—coupled with shifting rainfall patterns and rising temperatures—cities in India face severe challenges. These include urban flooding, depletion of groundwater, the urban heat island effect, and excessive energy consumption for cooling buildings. Traditional grey infrastructure alone is proving inadequate to address these issues, necessitating a shift towards Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) to build climate-resilient cities.

NbS are fast emerging as low-risk, low-cost, and low-maintenance solutions with multiple benefits such as disaster risks, land degradation, biodiversity loss, warming, urban flooding, air and water pollution, and the promotion of health and well-being in cities.

What are nature-based solutions?

Per the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 2022) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2020), nature-based solutions are actions that conserve, manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems in ways that address a range of social, economic, and environmental challenges. NbS are regarded as ecosystem-based approaches to ensure conservation, management, and sustainable utilisation of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine systems.

NbS has the potential to provide a holistic framework for meeting national priorities and sustainable development goals of India. NbS holds huge potential for carbon sequestration. Globally NbS have the potential to meet about 37% of climate targets required until 2030 (World Bank, 2022).

What are urban NbS?

NbS have a very wide application and can be applied to several sectors, such as forest and biodiversity conservation, agriculture and food security, water security, energy security, etc. Amongst these, urban NbS are soon finding great popularity to advance the agenda of “nature-positive cities.” Including NbS in cities would start from a detailed mapping and understanding of the city’s natural ecosystem—topography, soil conditions, drainage, waterbodies, wetlands, mangroves, forests, hills, wasteland, open land, biodiversity, etc.—and integrating them within city planning. This would include not only conserving and restoring these environmental features but also ensuring that city systems work seamlessly with its natural systems, an approach known a “biophilic city design.”

Some of the most common NbS for cities include the integration of green-roofs, rain gardens, permeable paving, bio-swales, riparian buffers, urban forests, and green corridors within the city’s natural and built environment.

Urban NbS in India

Many Indian cities are now trying to get back to nature by introducing NbS to address localised climate and disaster induced challenges.

• Sponge Cities Initiative in Chennai: Aims to manage urban flooding by making urban areas more permeable, recharging groundwater and storing rainwater.
• Biodiversity Parks in Delhi: Establishing a network of Biodiversity Parks to integrate plants, animals, and microbes into the city’s urban ecosystem.
• Miyawaki Forests: This method for afforestation, which includes dense plantation of native and quick growing trees in small land areas to create forest ecosystems within cities, is successfully being applied in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, and many other Indian cities.

However, to unlock the full potential benefits of NbS, cities need to move beyond piecemeal applications and adopt a city-wide integrated approach.

Global stories of city-wide adoption of NbS

India could adopt an overarching policy framework at the national, state, and city level to promote the implementation of NbS, and could rely on the experiences of several successful global cases.

• Singapore's ABC Waters Programme:Since its launch in 2006, this initiative has managed to transform the entire drainage network into soft-lined nature areas, which includes parks and recreational spaces.
• Australia’s Water Sensitive Urban Design: This programme in Australia focuses on managing, protecting, and restoring waterways and wetlands in cities via implementation of suitable non- structural controls that work with native vegetation and natural landform.

Mainstreaming urban NbS in Indian cities

1. Policy and regulatory framework

• Convergence with existing schemes: The quickest way to implement NbS in cities would be to dovetail them within the existing government programmes such as the national and state disaster management plans and funds, Compensatory Afforestation Fund, The Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI) scheme, state action plans for climate, and city master plans, and central missions such as AMRUT and SBM.
• Revisions in city planning and development control norms: Include NbS in national guidelines such as the URDPFI and the Model building bylaws. Similarly, attempt to include NbS within the state level town planning acts and state / city level development control regulations.
• National guidelines for NbS: Develop guidelines to design, implement, and maintain NbS to help urban planners and engineers to integrate them into city master plans and infrastructure plans.
• Revision of government schedules of rates: Include specific items for NbS in state government schedules of rates to help city engineers to arrive at cost estimates and seek budgetary funding.
• Monitoring and evaluation: Formulation of environment cells within the state and city urban development department responsible for implementation of NbS and its regular tracking.

2. Financing framework

• Central government initiatives: Central governments could incentivise state and local governments through grants and subsidies for NbS projects via existing schemes or the launch of a dedicated scheme.
• Local government funding: Local governments could make explicit allocations for green infrastructure projects such as constructing urban wetlands, riparian buffers, bioswales, etc.
• Development finance institutions: DFIs could increase focus on NbS and increase allocation of concessional loans and grants to promote NbS commodities, products, and programmes.
• Private finance: Green bonds and other financial instruments can help attract investment in sustainable urban development. Public projects related to water, waste, and transportation can be restructured to incorporate nature-based solutions (NbS) and then marketed to private investors through public-private partnerships (PPPs).
• Sale of carbon credits through voluntary carbon markets: NBS-related carbon credit projects focus on reducing emissions and improving carbon sinks by reviving natural processes could be explored.
• Incentivising green infrastructure: Governments can offer incentives such as tax benefits, subsidies, additional FAR, etc., for NbS installations such as green roofs, rain gardens, household rainwater harvesting, and other such initiatives.

3. Stakeholder engagement

The list below are key stakeholders presently active in advancing NbS in India. To ramp up efforts, it would be imperative to find networks and platforms to create a much stronger synergy between these agencies.

• Government agencies: MoEFCC, State and Local Governments, and the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA)
• International organizations: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), WWF, etc.
• Research and academic institutions: The India Forum for Nature-based Solutions—a national coalition platform—led by the National Institute of Urban Affairs’ Climate Centre for Cities (NIUA C-Cube), Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), universities, and other academic institutions.
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society: Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), local community groups, etc.
• Local communities: Residents and community leaders, farmers, and indigenous groups.
• Private sector: Real estate developers, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, environmental, design, and engineering consulting firms and experts.
• Financial institutions: Banks and investment firms, international donors, and development agencies.

4. Capacity building

• Training of municipal staff: Undertake capacity-building initiatives, demonstration projects, and regulatory reforms to counter the traditional mindsets among city engineers who are accustomed to conventional concrete-based infrastructure and may view NbS as unproven or impractical.
• Skill development: Offer training programmes to local contractors and workforce who are able to engage with municipalities on these, often, small and low budget NbS projects.
• Undertaking demonstration projects: Develop pilot projects by working with local experts, contractors, and communities, possibly on government buildings and campuses.

5. Public awareness

• Educate the public about the benefits of NbS and involve them in the planning and maintenance of NbS (e.g., tree plantation drives, rainwater harvesting, and urban gardening) to foster a sense of ownership and stewardship.
• Bring about behaviour change through promoting sustainable lifestyles and urban development.

6. Research and innovation

• Develop a knowledge base on NbS and its potential to mitigate and adapt to changes in the environment and climate: applications sorted by various climatic and geographic locations, various technologies and options, implementation, monitoring, cost-benefit analysis, key schemes funding sources, stakeholders, and implementation partners. Leverage community knowledge and traditional practices in the design and implementation of NbS.
• Mainstream reporting on biodiversity parameters in addition to climate impacts, valuation of ecosystem services and natural capital accounting practices, and reliable assessments of cost and benefits of NbS solutions to help leverage private participation.
• Research on innovative solutions around green and blue infrastructure and the potential to leverage smart technology and artificial intelligence for NbS management.

ICF’s role in nature-based solutions

ICF has more than 30 years of experience working collaboratively with national, regional, and local governments and private sector clients to plan, design, implement, and monitor ecological restoration projects in a wide variety of environments ranging from coastal wetlands and estuaries to freshwater river systems and grassland, scrub, and woodland habitats. ICF brings extensive technical expertise in NbS for flooding, with experience in key sectors including water, urban design, agriculture, transport, and energy. Recognizing that conservation problems are people problems, we develop solutions considering the social contexts and the people whose behaviour affects the resources.

Over the last 5 years, ICF led 18 tropical biodiversity and forest analyses focused on identifying biodiversity co-benefits, including identifying opportunities to integrate NbS benefits across technical sectors. ICF also developed relevant guidelines such as Nature-based Solutions for Coastal Highway Resilience (2019) and the Sector Environmental Guidelines (SEGs) for Biodiversity Conservation, Agriculture, Infrastructure, and Healthcare Programming, providing practical guidance on how to design and implement NbS in various contexts.

We are currently working with Natural England on a £12.5m Shared Outcome Funded pilot to test approaches to creating and restoring natural habitats in ways that tackle the twin challenges of mitigating the risks to changing environments and climate and biodiversity loss, while also exploring governance models and blended finance approaches.

Recently, we supported Rajkot Municipal Corporation in a feasibility study for NbS in Rajkot, a city facing various issues such as urban flooding and the urban heat island effect.