Mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions
How might we design a catchment resilience driver and test it through a regulatory sandbox framework, to enable nature-based solutions address catchment wide challenges and provide a model that could be taken forward through water reform?
The current water system delivery largely focuses on end-of-pipe solutions to acute asset-specific problems, with limited drivers and no clear delivery pathway for upstream interventions that build catchment resilience by addressing multiple, chronic, catchment-wide challenges. The Vision for Water White Paper places greater emphasis on integrated systems planning, preventative approaches and the use of nature-based solutions, but regulatory barriers and uncertainty remain. What’s needed is a space for collaboration and innovation that allows these approaches to be tested safely and credibly.
This sprint will focus on developing a catchment resilience driver and testing it through a regulatory sandbox framework for catchment resilience.
Participants will explore how such a sandbox could operate in practice, how it aligns with current policy direction, and how it could unlock nature-based solutions at scale. The sprint will apply the emerging framework to one or more real trial areas and develop the foundations of a formal proposal.
Participants will collaborate through structured design sessions, applied exploration and storytelling activities across a three-day sprint:
- Design a driver and regulatory sandbox framework for catchment resilience, informed by policy reviews and sector perspectives
- Apply the framework to one or more candidate trial areas with input from local partners and technical experts
- Develop a clear narrative and early proposal to support funding for further development of the framework, regulatory engagement and the water reform process
A practical and transferable regulatory sandbox framework for testing a catchment resilience driver, applied to defined trial areas, and a draft proposal suitable for further development and submission.
This sprint is relevant to water companies, regulators, policy makers, catchment organisations, local authorities, suppliers and consultants.
It welcomes both specialists in regulation, environment and planning, and those with practical local knowledge or a general interest in catchment resilience and system reform.