The latest guidance for Nature-based Solutions in ports

Embracing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can address the social, economic and environmental challenges faced by ports. They can also help you meet industry demands and increase your resilience to climate threats in a sustainable and future-facing way. Unlike hard infrastructure, NbS work with your environment rather than against it, continually adapting to maintain your resilience.

At Haskoning, we’re always eager to champion NbS, and the beneficial role they can play in shaping infrastructure of the future. As such, we were proud to be a leading party in the preparation of the latest guide by World Bank and EcoShape: Nature-based solutions for ports.

Nature-based Solutions for ports

World Bank and EcoShape’s guide combines experience from pilot projects, research, and consultations to identify opportunities for NbS in the port sector. It represents an advancement in how NbS can be embraced by ports – providing tangible and actionable examples and advice for port owners, authorities, managers, investors and other parties.

The biggest challenges ports face when implementing NbS is uncertainty, building the business case and financing of NbS. Regulatory frameworks, institutions and collaboration mechanisms do not yet fully facilitate NbS implementation. And the adaptable and project-specific nature of NbS can make their benefits difficult to tangibly demonstrate from a technical, economic, and operational perspective.

However, taking a multidisciplinary approach and embedding NbS into port planning, governance, and operations can help you achieve operational and environmental resilience for decades to come, with benefits exceeding the port’s limits and positively affecting neighbouring nature and communities.

The guide identifies six key enablers for the successful implementation of NbS: technology and system knowledge; management, monitoring, and maintenance; business case construction; institutional embedding; taking a multistakeholder approach; and an emphasis on capacity strengthening.

The guide highlights the huge potential of NbS for port-specific applications. It dives into the challenges NbS can help ports solve, the opportunities they can enable, and acts as a guide to help your port capitalise. This includes:

• Discussion of how NbS can address port challenges holistically and deliver impact that is difficult to replicate with traditional port infrastructure
• Examples of different real-world case studies that showcase the application of NbS
• An explanation of the general principles for successful NbS implementation 
• Exploration of port sector perspectives, to understand and assuage perceived barriers and risks to implementation
• Practical advice for building a business case and financing NbS

The right approach to NbS starts with your port’s specific context

Successful NbS are always project-specific, and require a tailor-made, multidisciplinary approach. Our team combines world-leading maritime experience with globally recognised expertise in NbS. We make sure to fully understand your port’s operational and environmental challenges to recommend and successfully implement the NbS that will deliver the most impact for you.

At Haskoning, we can provide an exploratory session to evaluate the specific NbS opportunities at your port, and work with you to create a business case and actionable plan to implement them successfully. 

Vital insight to drive the NbS conversation

Thank you to World Bank and EcoShape for this crucial and informative guide, it was a pleasure to work on and be part of such an expert collaboration. We would also like to acknowledge the support from GFDRR and PROBLUE for this project.

Alongside Haskoning’s own experts, Gosse de Boer and Niels van Kouwen, an insightful consortium of other leading sustainable development specialists from across the industry contributed to this effort. The resulting guide consolidated that wealth of knowledge into a practical document that will no doubt advance NbS in the port sector.