Nature based Solutions (NbS) use natural processes to address societal challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and integrated water resource management. Examples include restoring wetlands, creating urban green spaces (community gardens and green roofs), and reconnecting rivers with their floodplains (Room for the River project). As these approaches become more widely used, governments, researchers, and practitioners increasingly rely on monitoring and evaluation to determine whether they are working as intended. However, NbS are part of complex landscapes in which ecological processes interact with land use, management practices, institutions, funding arrangements, and the priorities of different stakeholders. What is measured and how it is measured can therefore influence how an intervention is understood, which of its benefits become visible, and how it is represented in policy.
This PhD research examines how monitoring and evaluation practices shape Nature based Solutions in practice. Focusing on peatland rewetting in Weerribben-Wieden in the Netherlands, the project investigates how ecological, social, and institutional relationships can be represented together, how uncertainty affects estimates of climate-mitigation performance, and how evaluation results are later used in decisions about funding, legitimacy, scaling, and wider application. The aim is to develop a more reflexive and system-aware approach to evaluating Nature based Solutions.
Involved: Rosalie Arendt, Markus Berger and Neelke Doorn from TU Delft