Today’s blog is written by Jazz Austin, Water Policy Officer, on RSPB Haweswater and Medmerry meeting the IUCN’s Global Standard for nature-based solutions.
RSPB sites, Haweswater and Medmerry, are two of five sites in England to successfully complete a new assessment process for nature-based solutions (NbS), designed by the International Union for the Convention of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN’s Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions aims to recognise and understand well-designed NbS, to help new and existing projects have a greater impact and share learnings.
Nature-based solutions are defined by the IUCN as ‘actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.’ Working with nature through NbS, provides a vital opportunity to improve global resilience and adaptation to climate change, as highlighted in the recent ‘Nature-based Solutions in UK Climate Adaptation Policy’ report, alongside climate mitigation benefits.
As a science-based and research-led organisation, the RSPB has significant experience in working in partnership to deliver NbS across a variety of habitats. The importance of this work is summarised in three storymaps for the following priority habitats: peatlands, forests and intertidal habitats.
Haweswater covers around 3,000 hectares of land on the catchment of Haweswater reservoir in the Lake District. The RSPB are tenants of this land and work in partnership with landowner, the water company, United Utilities to restore a healthy mosaic of upland habitats for water, wildlife and people.
Medmerry is a £28 million project that is helping to protect two towns in West Sussex from coastal flooding and providing much needed intertidal wild spaces that are helping the wildlife of the area recover from lost wetland elsewhere along the Solent. It is an Environment Agency flood protection scheme, created in partnership with the RSPB and forms vital new intertidal wildlife habitats.
In the example of Haweswater, work proactively seeks to enhance the functionality and connectivity of the ecosystem, whilst providing benefits to water and people. Water provides the vital link between interventions in the landscape from higher upland reaches of the site to the valley below, including through:
Restoring watercourses
Swindale Beck, a river which had historically been artificially straightened and its riverbanks raised, has had its natural function restored. By creating a more meandering course and removing raised banks, the water is now allowed to flood onto the meadows, slowing its flow down the valley, helping to reduce flooding downstream. The restoration has also improved conditions for wildlife; Atlantic salmon rapidly recolonised and now spawn in the restored sections.
Restoring peat bogs
Working together with Natural England, Cumbria Wildlife Trust and other partners, over 50km of artificial drains have been blocked, raising the water table to increase the abundance of peat-forming bog mosses and so increasing carbon sequestration. This has resulted in reduced peat erosion allowing habitats to recover, greater volumes of water to be stored in the land, helping slow the velocity of water reaching the rivers below and supporting a greater diversity of specialised moorland wildlife.
Changes to livestock and transparent financing
Lower stocking rates of livestock relieves pressure on compacted soil, improves soil and water quality, encourages regeneration of vegetation, and can improve farm profitability through reduced input costs. The team have published the farming accounts for Naddle and Swindale Farms to help be transparent about the opportunities and challenges associated with upland farming within the current systems. Without significant government grants - over a quarter of a million pounds per year at Haweswater - the farm business here would make a huge loss. The team are now looking into alternative financing to engage with small-scale local enterprises and the local economy, and with the emerging markets for public money for public goods.
Tree planting and woodland restoration
Over 100,000 trees have been planted at Haweswater since 2011, to reduce the amount of sedimentation in water reaching the reservoir from soil erosion and to create new homes for woodland wildlife. There is an expanding on-farm tree nursery which provides locally sourced saplings.
As illustrated in this case study, working with nature through well-designed and high-quality NbS, provides a vital opportunity to lock away carbon in natural ecosystems as well as improving resilience and adaptation to climate change impacts.
NbS interventions can also have significant positive impacts on biodiversity recovery and habitat creation whilst providing wider societal benefits. Planning for these multiple benefits is fundamental for projects adhering to true NbS principles and actions to protect and restore nature must have wider societal benefits and respect human rights, particularly of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
In addition, ecosystems have an important role to play in climate change mitigation by storing carbon. Whilst the RSPB strongly promotes the important role of NbS in climate change mitigation, it must be achieved in parallel to an urgent fossil-fuel phase-out and economy-wide emissions reductions.
Whilst supporting the use of NbS, we also need to use the policy and regulatory tools available to protect existing priority habitats that are already storing huge quantities of carbon and providing a home for wildlife, such as wetlands, forests, peatlands and grasslands. Recent analysis finds that protecting existing carbon stocks in the UK will secure 16,231 Mt CO2e, equivalent to over 36 years of UK emissions at 2018 levels.
IUCN Global Standard for NbS and supporting assessment process is a helpful tool to ensure that existing and future NbS projects are well-designed and high-quality schemes with benefits to climate, biodiversity and people.
It is fantastic that RSPB Haweswater and Medmerry, are some of the first to be recognised through this process and hope that this will give confidence for more NbS projects to be delivered at scale, both in the UK and overseas.
For more information about the IUCN’s Global Standard for NbS, the IUCN are showcasing the projects which have successfully completed the assessment process at COP26 in the Nature Pavilion and the session can be watched live today from 09:00-10:30am on Wednesday 10th November 2021.