Increasingly, people are turning to Nature-Based Solutions – actions that harness the power of nature to provide environmental, social and economic benefits – to help improve the health of marine and coastal ecosystems and address human impacts for the benefit of society. The development of Nature-Based Solutions for addressing societal challenges such as climate change, disaster risk reduction and food security presents opportunities for humans and nature, but it can also carry risks of failing to live up to promises and negatively impacting local communities when poorly designed or implemented.
MaCoBioS aims to address these risks by improving our understanding of Nature-Based Solutions, working with stakeholders to co-design theory and tools and help decision-makers and practitioners communicate and implement effective and considered NBS. Achieving this means incorporating societal values and expectations and taking into consideration local experiences and knowledge in science-informed solutions and policy guidance. Engaging with stakeholders and embedding them into MaCoBioS is therefore essential to ensure effective policy advice.
A stakeholder is any group, organisation or individual who has an interest in, can affect, or is affected by something. In the scope of MaCoBioS, this means stakeholders are those who:
- make use of marine and coastal ecosystems (e.g., fishers, divers, etc.);
- benefit from the services marine and coastal ecosystems provide (e.g., local communities benefiting from coastal protection);
- have a direct role in the management of marine and coastal ecosystems or stressors that affect them (e.g., protected area managers, coastal managers); and/or
- can influence the management of marine and coastal ecosystems through policies, legislation, funding, research, environmental education, etc. (e.g., policy-makers, universities, NGO).
We want to involve people representing these diverse stakeholder groups in MaCoBioS so that we can share information, learn from them, and identify and respond to their needs. In doing so, we aim to improve the robustness of our analyses and findings and ensure the relevance, social acceptability and legitimacy of our results and policy advice.