Organization of a Panel at the 5th ICPP Conference

They chaired a panel entitled "Questioning the turn of water-related risk policies towards nature" at the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) held in Barcelona (Pompeu Fabra University) July 5-9, using a hybrid format. You can browse the panel program and read the abstracts of the participants on the conference website.

This panel brought together examples of Nature-based Solutions implemented in different countries (France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Colombia), looking at different challenges (water quality, flood risk, erosion, sea-level rise, etc.) and involving different actors (policy-makers, practitioners, state and local governments, citizens, non-profits, etc.).

The panel discussed transversal topics:

• NbS require citizen participation. Are NbS enabling more room for public participation in policy-making? Does public participation increase the legitimacy of managers? Is public participation enabling a definition of a new general interest? How is public participation impacting a floodplain manager’s choice of an NbS projects vs. a traditional hard infrastructure?
• “Let nature do its work”. NbS involve alleviating our desire to control nature to promote the natural development of the environment, encompassing adaptative management and the associated uncertainties. Given that, how do managers and experts integrate these dimensions into their practices? Are there some resistances to this necessary adaptation of practices? Do NbS challenge the classical experts’ position of controlling nature? Does it impact the trust of inhabitants towards expertise and engineering solutions? Is this adaptative management adapted or constrained by the existing frames of public action (i.e. projects developed through a limited time frame and restrictive scales)?
• We have seen that the definition and institutionalization of NbS is still an ongoing process. NbS still appears as a fuzzy expression and reinterpreted by different actors. However, is the ambiguity of the definition an opportunity for action (i.e. acting as an ambiguous consensus)? Do some actors re-label projects (e.g. green infrastructure projects) as NbS? What are the impacts of this re-labelling/labelling to waterscapes?
• NbS can have unintended/adverse/unthought effects such as de-location of residents, gentrification or the increase of environmental/social inequalities. However, what is specific to NbS compared to other urban development projects?