Priorities for mainstreaming urban nature-based solutions in Australian cities

Abstract

Nature-based solutions, ecosystem-based approaches that deliver multiple benefits, including biodiversity habitat, have the potential to address a range of challenges that cities are increasingly facing. Nature-based solutions can contribute towards addressing intersecting climate change and biodiversity extinction crises. Mainstreaming nature-based solutions involves policy and planning approaches that shift from a reliance on grey infrastructure to integrating nature-based approaches in urban infrastructures. Mainstreaming requires integration across sectors, scales and stakeholders, as well as across policy domains and levels of governance. While much of the NBS research originates from European and North American contexts, Australian cities are distinctive; the priorities for mainstreaming NBS in Australian cities need to respond to Australia's distinctive context and local research in addition to learning from global research. In this perspective, we propose four priority pathways for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in Australian cities: i) addressing changing climate conditions and climate extremes, including heat and drought; ii) embedding an ecology and biodiversity focus, including threatened species, as well as considering the risks of ‘ecological traps’; iii) localising approaches that bring together local knowledges, research, and practice; and iv) foregrounding Indigenous knowledges and Custodianship as decolonising approaches. Urban planning in Australia cities, as well as cities globally, needs to take an ecological shift and consider planning with and for nature. The proposed four pathways present a way forward for urban planning to facilitate a socio-ecological transition that can build more climate-resilient cities while strengthening ecological knowledge, memory, sense of place and cultural inclusivity.