Talk:Nature-based solutions

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2021 and 19 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CarolinaStudent. Peer reviewers: Shendralar.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:29, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

2021 Updates
Hello everyone, I am going to be working on this article for a course. My intentions are to update some information such as definitions and new case studies that are recent(2020 or 2021) and include a small section on efficacy of Nature-based solutions. Furthermore, it appears some work needs to be done in citations on the article. My goal is to resolve some of this. Please respond on the talk page if you have any questions or concerns regarding the work I do. Thanks! CarolinaStudent (talk) 20:11, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Improvements in March 2018
Hi everyone watching this article, in particular User:Dimibrosens who has done most of the ground work! This is a very interesting article. I am going to do some work on it ahead of this year's World Water Day on 22 March (always good to have an internal deadline!). I feel that so far the article has its own style, very much driven by various EU projects but does not fully conform with the Wikipedia encyclopedic style yet. So I am going to try and improve on that. If you have any concerns about the changes I am making or the direction I am taking this, please don't hesitate to bring them up here on the talk page. Thanks! If you want to know more about how I got here, please see here on the SuSanA discussion forum. EMsmile (talk) 02:53, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I just moved the readability dial (lead only) from 25 to 30. Not impressive. Yet. One possibility is to take out duplicate references to "climate change" and other issues that get more than one mention.PlanetCare (talk) 13:36, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

New open access publication available
There is a new open access publication available that could be used to improve this article further. See here: "Nature-Based Solutions for Wastewater Treatment: A Series of Factsheets and Case Studies" by IWA Publishing. EMsmile (talk) 04:35, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Nature-based solutions as a powerful mitigation option
Hello, I noticed there was no section of this wiki article that addresses concerns about nature-based solutions. Clearly this is important if a balanced view is going to be provided. A useful critic of NBS can be found in the document produced by the which can be found here >> https://www.ienearth.org/nature-based-solutions/ Regards, Tim   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.150.36.80 (talk) 07:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I would like to include a section on NSB for climate mitigation. This goes beyond emissions reductions and sequestration to articulate the benefits of restoration and regeeration in restoring hydrological cyles and of increased vegetation cooling landscapes as demonstrated in this article. Any thoughts PeterBruce-Iri (talk) 22:32, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi User:PeterBruce-Iri, I also had plans to add a section on climate mitigation; then I saw your talk page message to see that you have the same idea. That's good. I think we need to use reliable sources though. The one that you linked to seems more of just a website blog post or alike. I think this one from SIWI would be better: https://siwi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/the-essential-drop-to-reach-net-zero_key-messages-and-executive-summary.pdf. It's from a big report by SIWI in 2022: The essential drop to Net-Zero: Unpacking freshwater’s role in climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 14:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The IPCC AR 6 WG III report mentions NBS 17 times (e.g. Chapter 4, 7 and 8) so we can also use this as a reliable source. EMsmile (talk) 14:17, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * PeterBruce-Iri (talk) 19:45, 27 December 2022 (UTC) Thanks @EMsmile. I have recently completed a page on Transpirational Cooling as an example of a nature based mitigation solution. The article shared might be characterised as a blog, but it draws on satellite images, that are clear and objective. I fear that if we wait for information to be validated through the academic journal route, it might be too old and homogenised to be of worth in the face of an urgent crisis. I note lots of wikipedia pages have a mixed range of references. The article you have shared appears to frame mitigation potential as emissions reductions and is probably locked into that paradigm.
 * There is a major difficulty in presenting a broader set of solutions. For example there has been great work done in Rhajasthan to restore rivers and raise vegetation cover from 2% to about 50% with a reported 2 degree C temperature reduction. However I can find no data to support it.
 * A colleague expresses it this way: "The biosphere has designed solutions over hundreds of millions of years to create the conditions for life to thrive, a stable metabolism protecting all of life on land and in the oceans. By learning from these natural processes we can restore these bio and climate systems".
 * Can you take a quick look at the transpirational cooling page and the evidence there and see if there might be grounds to collaborate on this - I'm keen. PeterBruce-Iri (talk) 19:45, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi User:PeterBruce-Iri, the IPCC reports are a very reliable source of information for Wikipedia articles. I suggest we need to focus on them (other publications can be brought in as well if they meet Wikipedia's reliability criteria (WP:RS)). Mitigation is defined as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing carbon sinks (see climate change mitigation). So I see no contradiction there. Transpirational cooling would fall into "enhancing carbon sinks" and also into climate change adaptation, I guess. I already looked at your article briefly a while ago and left a comment for you on the talk page there. EMsmile (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Section on concerns missing
Hello, I noticed there was no section of this wiki article that addresses concerns about nature-based solutions. Clearly this is important if a balanced view is going to be provided. A useful critic of NBS can be found in the document produced by the which can be found here >> https://www.ienearth.org/nature-based-solutions/ Regards, Tim — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.150.36.80 (talk) 07:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC) 180.150.36.80 (talk) 08:01, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I have added a section on "critique" using that publication that you mentioned. But I would be against adding more from that publication as it reads rather like an opinion piece from a (kind of) lobby group. But if we find other sources that also voice this or other criticism then it would be good to add more content under this section. EMsmile (talk) 14:53, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've now added some more content under "critique" (actually I think "concerns" is a better section heading, I'll change that). I think this sentence was useful and important: However, the IPCC pointed out that the term is "the subject of ongoing debate, with concerns that it may lead to the misunderstanding that NbS on its own can provide a global solution to climate change". EMsmile (talk) 09:40, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Overhaul
I've just given this article a major overhaul. I've taken out a lot of fluff and excessive content about past EU projects. In general, there was too much content taken from EU publications. I balanced this with some content from IPCC reports, and I've added more content about using NBS in the context of climate change. What else should be done to improve this article further? What's missing or unclear? EMsmile (talk) 09:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Thankyou. A few comments:
 * The lead is good, covers the important points and has plenty of examples
 * More explanation/simplification of the text eg. infrastructure investment, where it might not be understood
 * Other main sectors could be added under 'application areas' - Disaster risk reduction, Food and agriculture/agroecology (this topic is most strikingly missing). Also the connection to UN sustainable development goals is not made (apart from in one place)
 * Urban areas is missing any discussion of NBS role in managing heat/high temperatures
 * Discussion about the importance of traditional/indigenous/local knowledge for NbS and restoration - mentioned in the history of the term but not in later sections.
 * The financing of NBS could be discussed more (under 'implementation'); also the economic benefit of NBS is not mentioned
 * I agree it would be good to see more content on Global South issues and examples Richarit (talk) 14:55, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for these very helpful pointers. This will help to improve the article further. I hope that someone can take this up in the near future. EMsmile (talk) 08:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)