The Journey to Nature Positive: Enhancing climate resilience against drought and flooding

This is the sixth article in our The Journey to Nature Positive series, where our specialists illustrate how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can tackle societal challenges, offer additional benefits over engineered solutions, and promote a nature-positive world.

For a refresher on what we mean by Nature-based Solutions and the topics discussed in the series thus far, view:

• The Journey to Nature Positive: Unlocking the power of Nature-based Solutions
• The Journey to Nature Positive: Integrating Freshwater Ecological Solutions in Infrastructure.
• The Journey to Nature Positive: Rethinking Nature-based Solutions for a Resilient Future
• The journey to Nature Positive: Methods for Sampling and Quantifying Nature in Landscape-Scale and Dispersed Projects
• The journey to Nature Positive: Unlocking the value of Nature-based Solutions in forestry through verified ecosystem services

Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience: Addressing Drought and Flooding

Climate change is driving more frequent and severe droughts and floods, presenting complex challenges for communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems worldwide. Traditional engineering solutions, while effective in some contexts, often fail to address the root causes of these risks and can inadvertently degrade natural systems. NbS offers a more sustainable, adaptive approach, harnessing the power of ecosystems to enhance resilience and deliver multiple benefits.

The Dual Challenge: Drought and Flooding

As global temperatures rise, precipitation patterns become more variable. Some regions experience prolonged dry spells, leading to water shortages and stressed ecosystems, while others face intense rainfall events that overwhelm drainage systems and cause devastating floods. Both extremes threaten critical infrastructure, agricultural productivity, water quality, and biodiversity — and disproportionately impact vulnerable communities.

Nature-based Solutions: A Synergistic Approach

NbS leverage natural processes and ecosystems to manage water, reduce risk, and enhance resilience. Key examples of this include:

• Riverine Flood Mitigation: Restoring floodplains, wetlands, and forests slows and stores floodwaters, reducing peak flows and protecting downstream assets. Removing dams and right-sizing culverts and bridges restores ecological connectivity and facilitates natural sediment flow, reducing flood risk and improving ecological function.
• Green Stormwater Infrastructure: Removing impervious surfaces and replacing them with pervious pavement, rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, and other green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) can capture rainwater before it enters drainage systems, mitigating stormwater flooding, reducing pollutant and sediment loads, supporting groundwater recharge, and creating community co-benefits.
• Living Shorelines and Green Bank Protection: Using plants and natural materials instead of concrete or stone to stabilise riverbanks and shorelines helps reduce erosion, absorb wave energy, and create habitat for fish and wildlife. These approaches protect people and nature at the same time — and adapt better to changing conditions like rising water levels.
• Urban Heat Mitigation: Green roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavements, urban canopy, and urban wetlands help manage stormwater, reduce heat stress, and create greener, healthier cities.
• Drought Resilience: Nature-based Solutions can enhance groundwater recharge, increase water storage in soils and wetlands, and maintain baseflows in rivers during dry periods. Utilising drought-tolerant plant species and designing landscapes that capture and distribute water effectively can improve the effectiveness of NbS.

These solutions are flexible and scalable, suitable for urban, rural, agricultural, inland, and coastal environments. They can also be integrated with traditional infrastructure to create hybrid systems that maximise resilience.

Beyond risk reduction, NbS improve water quality, support biodiversity, provide recreational and cultural value, capture atmospheric carbon, and strengthen community well-being.

Our Experience

Our Climate Resilience team brings together multidisciplinary expertise in climate science, engineering, ecology, operations and management, and stakeholder engagement to help clients navigate increasing climate risks and opportunities. We work closely with clients to identify vulnerabilities, model future climate scenarios, and develop tailored strategies that integrate Nature-based Solutions with traditional infrastructure to build long-term adaptive capacity and ensure that communities and assets are better prepared for a changing climate.

Below are some examples of our project experience that demonstrate the practical application of Nature-based Solutions for climate resilience:

How We Can Help

NbS provide significant opportunities to accelerate sustainable approaches to building climate resilience. Delivering on this ambition will require specialists (including Aquatic Ecologists, Hydrologists, Hydrogeologists, Engineers, Soil Scientists, Economists, Social Scientists, and Climate Scientists) collaborating to plan, design and implement schemes that work and integrate with primary project outcomes.

Our industry leading specialists offer comprehensive aquatic environmental, ecology, and biodiversity services globally. They can support your organisation with governance and strategy advice, as well as operational project support to incorporate NbS at all stages of infrastructure developments.

To speak with one of our specialists, contact us today.