Ports are crucial for global trade and particularly vital for low- and middle-income countries, handling over 11 billion tons of goods annually and supporting millions of jobs globally. However, ports increasingly face challenges in balancing efficiency, climate resilience, and sustainability. Nature-based solutions (NBS) can offer an additional tool for port authorities seeking to address these intersecting challenges effectively.
In combination with traditional engineering, NBS offer a promising pathway to enhance climate resilience, promote environmental stewardship, and contribute to sustainability and development goals by integrating natural processes into infrastructure and operations. NBS can also play a significant role in maintaining ports’ social license to operate, strengthening relationships with coastal stakeholders, and creating opportunities for public-private partnerships.
The guidance note, Nature-Based Solutions for Ports: An Overview of NBS Implementation in Practice - Opportunities and Challenges, outlines principles, opportunities, and examples to inform the adoption of NBS in the sector for port authorities, planners, policymakers, infrastructure professionals, and financiers. It is the result of a collaboration between the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), PROBLUE, and EcoShape, with funding from the Government of Japan.
The core value proposition of NBS is their ability to address port governance and development challenges through ecosystem services that traditional infrastructure cannot easily replicate. NBS can also complement traditional engineering in hybrid solutions to retrofit or enhance existing infrastructure. The advantages of NBS include hazard mitigation, biodiversity benefits, improved water quality, carbon sequestration, and their dual-use as recreational spaces. These benefits can reduce capital investments, lower maintenance costs, and yield multifaceted positive outcomes.
The guidance note identifies four key families of NBS opportunities for port resilience:
Working with Coastal Systems: Strategies that integrate natural coastal processes, addressing challenges like sedimentation within ports and optimizing port location and design.
Wave and Coastal Dynamics Attenuation: Solutions using living shorelines, reefs, vegetation, and landscape features to reduce wave impacts, manage the movement of sediments, and mitigate storm impacts.
Beneficial Reuse of Dredged Sediment: Approaches that reduce capital and maintenance dredging costs by reusing sediments or coordinating dredging activities with NBS projects.
Enhancement of Grey Structures: Retrofits such as micro-habitat creation and other solutions can increase the environmental value of traditional port infrastructure.
To demonstrate practical applications of these opportunities, the guidance note includes key case studies. For example, in Nigeria, the Lekki sandbar breakwater facilitates sediment transport and wave dynamics for the port, decreasing construction time, construction costs, and maintenance needs. In Indonesia, Jakarta’s Batavia port, which was long hampered by outdated facilities, expanded its fishing port using local materials and mangroves to reinforce the breakwater—an approach well suited to areas facing subsidence and sea-level rise.
