NBS Value - making the case for Nature-based Solutions

NBS Value offers economic understanding of benefits of Nature-based Solutions (NBS), making it possible to go beyond traditional business cases.

Climate change is shaping our world and making us rethink how to live, build, and grow in balance with nature. Moreover, urbanization is leaving less space for water, nature, and everyday life.

One path forward is through Nature-based Solutions (NBS) which are solutions that protect, restore, and sustainably manage natural ecosystems to address societal challenges like climate change, water security, and disaster risk.

What distinguishes Nature-based Solutions from traditional solutions – predominantly based on grey infrastructure – is the range of provided co-benefits. Co-benefits are defined as additional positive externalities that go beyond the primary benefits of e.g., avoided flood damages and pollution prevention through the implementation of sewer flow reduction and effluent treatment.

Co-benefits can include reduced healthcare costs by encouraging physical activity through the design of a new park, the cooling effect, and reduced energy bills provided by additional trees in the urban space, or increased traffic safety resulting from a bioswale or a network of rain gardens designed to slow down traffic.

Capturing the long-term value of Nature-based Solutions

However, quantifying the full impact of Nature-based Solutions is not easy, since many of the co-benefits are difficult to measure or compare in traditional cost-benefit analyses. Also, uncertainties and data gaps often stand in the way of fully understanding the worth of working with nature.
That's why we created NBS Value – a powerful tool that provides a comprehensive economic assessment of the long-term benefits of NBS strategies.

NBS Value combines quantified data and valuations from a global database of officially recognized socio-economic calculation methodologies, peer-reviewed published scientific studies, and evaluation of implemented case studies. Hence, it provides a range of pivotal insights:

  • Spatial assessment of various benefits of NBS
  • Economic valuation of lifelong NBS benefits
  • Comparison and evaluation of NBS strategies
  • Development of NBS business cases
  • Justification of NBS expenditure and budgeting

By providing these insights, NBS Value helps us move beyond traditional business cases by integrating the often-overlooked co-benefits of designing with nature and designing for more than one purpose. Often the co-benefits from NBS are making up 25 - 50 % of the total project benefits, which can be the deciding factor in achieving a positive return on investment.

Through simple steps, NBS Value converts co-benefits into tangible numbers that support budgeting, co-financing, and strategic decisions. We start by exploring a shared vision with stakeholders and clients because we need to jointly prioritize the co-benefits that matter most and collectively unfold how these priorities inform the design approach. We continue with place-specific data collection, recognizing that each place is unique and we need site-specific information, both spatial and socio-economic.

Following this, NBS Value is applied to produce an estimate of the lifelong benefits and socio-economic value of the proposed NBS and illustrative graphs for impactful communication. Finally, the tool output can be directly embedded in the business case to justify NBS expenditure and budgeting.