Harnessing Natural Capital: Leveraging Ecosystem Services and Nature-based Solutions for Enhanced Water Management and Resilience

Código

I-EBHE0150

Autores

Gabriel Marinho e Silva, Marcos Roberto Benso, Eduardo Mário Mendiondo

Tema

WG 2.4: Acceptance of Nature-based solutions & their implementation in guidelines

Resumo

Climate change projections are associated with the increase of floods, droughts, water pollution, and water supply demand, which impacts the delivery of important ecosystem services. Nature-based Solutions (Nb-S) are a form of enhancing the Natural Capital and have been gaining attention for harnessing the inherent capabilities of ecosystems to cope with water-related problems, therefore being a tool for integrated water resources management and disaster risk reduction. The Natural Capital refers to the stocks of assets provided by nature that deliver well-being to humans, either directly or indirectly, through ecosystem services. With regards to water resources, the preservation of the Natural Capital, and consequently the Ecosystems Services, has a significant impact in society, reducing water pollution loading and droughts and floods events, as also increasing the water availability and adaptation to extreme events, for example. Despite demanding more investments than tradition engineering approaches, Nb-S have a significant impact on promoting sustainability with collaboration with local communities and promotion of governance. . In the past year a substantial progress has been made with the support of international initiatives such as UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration to the World Economic Forum (2021-2030) and the Global Program on Nb-S for Climate Resilience, there is still the need to develop and tests methods to assist decision-making at a global scale. In this study, a data-driven framework using Decision Tree algorithms is proposed to understand the relationship between the Natural Capital and the Ecosystem Services worldwide, to understand and promote the employment of Nb-S for developing smart and resilience society, in response to the challenge posed by climate change and water-related risk. The focus will be on three main Ecosystem Services: (i) regulation of freshwater quantity and (ii) quality and (iii) regulation of hazards and extreme events. Therefore, the idea of this work is to answer the following question: ?how the multivariate universe of Natural Capital and its Ecosystem Services can be explained to reduce the risks of hydrological extremes from the perspective of quantitative-qualitative water regulation on a global scale?? The methodology is based on several drivers and parameters that can be quantitative or qualitative related to water, including land cover, impervious surface, soil salinization, pesticide risk and agricultural water stress, as well as socio-drivers, as population density and Gross Domestic Product. Finally, it is expected that the data-driven framework can serve as a foundation to identify areas where Nb-S can be applied to intensify and promote integrated water resources management and disaster risk reduction.