On the path to Nature-based Solutions with Melbourne Biodiversity Institute

From the first group brainstorming session until the closing remarks, the Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) Pathways Workshop on 19-20 February was abuzz with ideas and insights. The workshop forms part of a national collaboration to identify pathways to scaling nature-based solutions for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction in Australia.

Co-hosted by NRM Regions Australia and Melbourne Biodiversity Institute, representatives from regional NRM organisations, finance, research, private land conservation, community resilience and more provided a wide breadth and depth of experience to explore evidence of NbS’ effectiveness and pathways to increase private investment. 

“The NRM sector is well aware that nature-based solutions are an integral part of integrated landscape management. These solutions help mitigate floods, fire, and drought. But we also know that we can’t deliver them at scale without strong cross-sectoral collaboration. 

The workshop built on our practical, place-based knowledge of nature-based solutions and explored ways to intensify these efforts by engaging people with related expertise in finance, policy, markets and research. It’s not often you get all these perspectives in the same room. It really helped us to examine some complex but critical ideas for scaling nature-based solutions.”

-Kat Allen, NACC NRM CEO

Amongst the wealth of ideas there were two key takeaways from the Melbourne workshop:

• Regional NRM organisations with their partners are uniquely positioned to coordinate and lead adoption of NbS for landscape-scale resilience.
• The time is now – with ever increasing frequency and severity of disasters across the country, we need to move rapidly to scale landscape-level NbS to mitigate disaster risks and enhance community resilience.

The workshop also identified gaps and opportunities in NbS to pursue next. Melbourne Biodiversity Institute’s Deputy Director Rachel Morgain said the collaboration provided a win-win for building collective understanding of NbS for disaster resilience and informing future work.

“We were delighted to partner with NRM Regions Australia to deliver this workshop.

The workshop gave us a great opportunity to map out some key questions that will help us scale up nature-based solutions for climate and disaster resilience in Australia – questions we can now start to address.”

Dr Rachel Morgain, Melbourne Biodiversity Institute, Deputy Director 

We thank the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute for hosting the workshop and for their continued collaboration on this work, as well as all the other partners and collaborators including Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board, Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, Glenelg Hopkins CMA, Hills & Fleurieu Landscape Board, Melbourne Water, Murraylands & Riverland Landscape Board, NACC NRM, North East Catchment Management Authority, Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, NRM South, Oceanwatch, West Gippsland CMA.

You can find out more about our work on Nature-led Resilience here: https://nrmregionsaustralia.com.au/project/nature-led-resilience-project/  

This project is being delivered by NRM Regions Australia with the support of the Minderoo Foundation.