Ofwat innovation fund winners aim to bring NbS into the mainstream

Mott MacDonald, alongside Jacobs, lead partners United Utilities and The Rivers Trust, and organisations from across the water industry and other sectors, have been awarded £8M by Ofwat’s Water Breakthrough Challenge to help bring about a step-change in the delivery of Nature-based Solutions (NbS).

The consortium is proposing a five-year programme of work that will turn NbS into a business-as-usual approach for the UK’s water sector by co-ordinating collaboration across sectors and delivering regulatory and policy recommendations to drive implementation at scale. The consortium will also look to create investment mechanisms and models for joined-up funding and establish standardised processes and tools for delivery and reporting.

Over the five-year period, the team will seek to deliver a multi-million-pound investment pipeline of projects across the UK.

NbS are interventions that respond to a specific need whilst at the same time protecting, sustainably managing, and restoring natural or modified ecosystems. Sustainable Drainage Systems and integrated constructed wetlands are examples of NbS working in tandem with traditional, engineered infrastructure.

They can also produce a range of economic, environmental and social benefits. Water security, improved biodiversity, carbon sequestration and cleaner air, as well as healthier and more attractive environments for living, are just some of the co-benefits that NbS can provide.

Marieke Nieuwaal, technical principal for NbS at Mott MacDonald, said: “The water sector faces a number of interconnected environmental and socio-economic challenges, which NbS can help meet. The problem is, if we are to really move the needle on these, we have to implement NbS at scale and move away from the fragmented and piece-meal investment and delivery approach that the sector suffers from at the moment.”

She continued: “No one organisation or sector can tackle the challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss and our efforts therefore have to be at a national and systemic level.”

To support delivery of the programme, the consortium will partner with 22 organisations from across multiple sectors and will work closely with Ofwat, the Environment Agency and Defra.

Mott MacDonald recently worked with North Star Transition and Anglian Water, both consortium partners, to assess the potential for investments in landscape scale interventions that could be made alongside the provision of two major new reservoirs. Around £900M of investments in agriculture, flood management and other natural capital related schemes were identified that could bring an estimated £5.7bn in co-benefits, which would address major challenges in the Fenland areas of England that are vulnerable to both flooding and drought impacts associated with climate change.