COP26 and Climate Resilient Public-Private Partnerships – Using Nature Based Solutions (NbS)

“Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are cost-effective solutions that provide benefits to the environment, economies and communities, and therefore are critical to enhance resilience through infrastructure. They can reduce the impact of disasters and increase the resilience of people, assets and ecosystems while supporting communities to adapt to a changing climate. PPPs can provide a vehicle to finance and scale up the implementation of NbS and promote the integration of NbS to enhance resilience of infrastructure from project identification. NbS should also be mainstreamed into the resilience options appraisal to adapt to and mitigate identified climate risks of an infrastructure project when adequate.”?Source – Global Center on Adaptation.

Introduction

During the COP26 Conference which starts on Glasgow on October the 31st, world leaders will try and reach consensus on mitigation measures to combat our warming planet and the consequences thereof.

Unfortunately, consensus that hopefully will be reached with only be as strong as the weakest link in the chain of nation’s support and their willingness to sign on to the next agenda.???This in effect means that adopted implementation thresholds??to improve the outcomes of COP26 will not be set by willing nations, but by the least willing nations. This is nothing new as previous conferences have shown.??Luckily, climate change focused scientists, planners, practitioners and policy makers have not been waiting for the outcome of COP26.??They have been working since the Paris 2015 conference (and before) to find measures that will ensure that our planet with almost eight billion inhabitants will remain globally a collection of comfortable and sustainable places to live in.

International Sustainable Resilience Center (ISRC)

As a Senior PPP advisor to the International Sustainable Resilience Center (ISRC -?https://isrc-ppp.org/) I have had numerous discussions with David Dodd (ISRC President and CEO) on how we can make Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) more resilient. These discussion have not been only academic in nature, but have been grounded in a hard reality and a need for immediate action.??The ISRC, which is located in New Orleans, has itself been impacted by major adverse climate induced hurricanes over the last two years.??ISRC’s??surrounding communities in Louisiana are scrambling to find measures to sustainably recover from what is becoming common place.??This is not the case with many international leaders who are adopting a wait and see approach to climate change impacts before they get serious. Many national leaders at COP26 will make promises, but until they are directly impacted, it might be politically difficult for them to decide how to garner political support in their countries to make meaningful policy pledges to support change.

A Global Network of Willing Partners

Fortunately, ISRC is part of a global network of the willing that is working on solutions that will not be held hostage to political maneuvering and decision making. We are allies of UNECE’s efforts to deliver People-First PPPs (PfPPPs) which are focused on sustainable and resilient strategies to build future proofed PPPs that will help countries achieve their sustainable development goals (SDGs).??We are also founding members of the World Association of PPP Units and Professions (WAPPP) that has a similar mission.??

Additionally, we have been fortunate to collaborate with the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) which launched its “Knowledge Module on Public-Private Partnerships for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure” in September 2021. This knowledge module is the outcome of a partnership of “willing nations and global institutions” which are exploring ways to “future proof” PPPs. Hopefully the GCA knowledge module will serve as a helpful guide to those who will be tasked by their governments to implement the resolutions of COP26 and find ways to “future proof” our world, especially when it comes to critical infrastructure that will help countries achieve their SDGs.

Leveraging Nature Based Solutions (NbS) for Resilient PPPs

During the September week long GCA launch of its knowledge module, a five day workshop was held where numerous guests from the multilateral banks and international institutions (i.e. the ADB, AfDB, EBRD, WB, IDB, and ISDB) regularly referred to nature based solutions (NbS) for building better, resilient and sustainable infrastructure. I was privileged to be one of the workshop moderators and personally participate in a number of meaningful debate on resilient PPPs.

NbS - which explore innovative implementation methods to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems - are a fundamental tool for building better PPPs in better places.??By leveraging the natural environment to protect vulnerable PPP infrastructure, we can mitigate risk which is a core focus of PPP implementation. The ISRC is critically aware of the potential of NbS to provide solutions to human damaged environmental and ecosystem degradation that has occurred in the Mississippi Delta – which is in its backyard. Delta communities are faced with a do-or-die situation regarding NbS.??Instead of building massive man-made “protective’ infrastructure to protect communities, it is time that NbS are implemented and leveraged to protect the physical fabric of PPPs.

Types of Nature Based Solutions

In the GCA knowledge module, three types of NbS are identified.??As quoted in the GCA document, they are the following –?

• “Type 1 – Low human intervention: consists of no or minimal intervention in ecosystems, with the objectives of maintaining or improving the delivery of a range of ecosystem services both inside and outside of these preserved ecosystems. Examples include the protection of mangroves in coastal areas to limit risks associated to extreme weather conditions and to provide benefits and opportunities to local populations, and the establishment of marine protected areas to conserve biodiversity within these areas while exporting biomass into fishing grounds. This type of NbS is connected to, for example, the concept of biosphere reserves incorporating core protected areas for nature conservation and buffer and transition areas where people live and work in a sustainable way.
• Type 2 – Medium human intervention: corresponds to the definition and implementation of management approaches that develop sustainable and multi-functional ecosystems and landscapes (extensively or intensively managed), which improves the delivery of selected ecosystem services compared to what would be obtained with a more conventional intervention. Examples include innovative planning of agricultural landscapes to increase their multifunctionality; and approaches for enhancing tree species and genetic diversity to increase forest resilience to extreme events. This type of Nature-based Solution is strongly connected to concepts like natural systems agriculture, agro-ecology, and evolutionary-orientated forestry.
• Type 3 – High human intervention: consists of managing ecosystems in very intrusive ways or even creating new ecosystems (e.g., artificial ecosystems with new assemblages of organisms for green roofs and walls to mitigate city warming and clean polluted air). Type 3 is linked to concepts like green and blue infrastructures and objectives like restoration of heavily degraded or polluted areas.”

The appropriate adoption of these types of NbS will beyond a doubt offer better alternatives to building coastal defenses for example, which have proven to be costly and, in many instances, short-term in nature and which have proven to be ineffective mitigations.

The Role of Nbs In PPPs

The GCA knowledge module describes the role of NbS in PPPs.??The following is said –?

“NbS necessarily requires the adoption of a systematic approach to identify the impacts of a project and influence the design of solutions that will contribute to achieving the project’s goals. In this way, they can be a helpful catalyst for practitioners to think through the interrelation of their projects on a broader scale. NbS can also be a critical factor in enhancing resilience through infrastructure, particularly important for vulnerable communities, who typically rely on natural resources and functioning ecosystems for their livelihoods.”

Building resilience into PPPs should be a fundamental policy, design and implementation principle as it will ensure that opportunities are created for resilient PPP projects – which are lengthy in nature - to??generate returns on private sector investments, save costs, and ensure that users continue to have access to critical infrastructure that withstands adverse climate impacts for the duration of project contract periods of performance??and even beyond.

Conclusion

I have no doubt that PPPs can provide an innovative vehicle to scale up development of critically needed resilient projects if NbS is incorporated into planning, development and policy strategies through improvements to the enabling environments and governance.??This will require partnerships of “willing stakeholders” inclusive of public sector officials and private sector investors.

Implementing NbS into PPPs will not be an easy approach as no one solution will fit every project. However private sector innovation combined with public sector acumen will result in collaborations that will be beneficial.??Innovation in design and financing mechanisms will allow governments and communities to build better PPP projects. This will require that challenges related to private sector investment model will also have to be addressed. However, a strong financial case can be made that integrating NbS solutions into the structuring of PPPs can help build project resilience and add to CapEx and OpEx savings over the full lifecycle of projects being planned. Saving money in the long-term will always be attractive to investors and politicians.

As GCA has correctly stated – “These solutions need to be one part of a wider portfolio of sustainability and resilience-building actions and appropriate investment and planning should be done for all of the possible solutions. Resilience must be built not only in the technical/physical elements, as in traditional engineering practices, but also in the social/organizational elements such as institutional arrangements.”

Reference Source:

Global Center on Adaption (September 2021):??Climate-Resilience Infrastructure Officer Handbook – Knowledge Module in Public-Private Partnerships for Climate Resilience Infrastructure.