Nature-Based Solutions: From Regulatory Necessity to Environmental Imperative
Why We Must Embrace Green Infrastructure Across All Sectors
The Environment Agency’s latest Chief Regulator’s report reveals a stark reality: despite decades of environmental regulation, only 16% of England’s surface water bodies achieve good ecological status. Storm overflows discharged sewage 450,398 times in 2024, agricultural pollution caused 74 serious incidents, and climate pressures continue to intensify. Traditional engineering solutions alone cannot solve these interconnected challenges. We need a fundamental shift toward nature-based solutions—and the evidence for why has never been clearer.
The Case for Change
The numbers tell a compelling story. Water industry discharges prevent 36% of waterbodies from reaching good ecological status, diffuse pollution from farming affects 40%, and urban runoff contributes to 18% of failures. Meanwhile, serious pollution incidents increased 9% between 2023 and 2024, reaching their highest level since 2013. The water and sewerage sector collectively achieved its lowest environmental performance rating since assessments began in 2011.
These aren’t isolated failures—they’re symptoms of infrastructure designed for a different era. Combined sewer systems built for Victorian populations now serve communities twice the size while facing rainfall patterns transformed by climate change. Agricultural land management practices optimised for production now generate nutrient loads our rivers cannot absorb. Hard surfaces in our expanding towns and cities send ever-greater volumes of contaminated runoff into already-stressed watercourses.
The cost of this approach extends beyond environmental damage. The report estimates air pollution causes approximately 30,000 deaths annually in the UK, with an economic cost potentially reaching £50 billion. Unmitigated climate impacts could reduce UK economic output by 7% GDP by 2050. Yet for every £1 invested in flood defences—many of which incorporate nature-based approaches—around £8 of damages are prevented.
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What Nature-Based Solutions Offer
Nature-based solutions work with natural processes rather than against them. In the water sector, this means creating storage in the landscape through wetland restoration, slowing water flow through strategic tree planting, restoring degraded peatlands, and protecting existing wetlands. These interventions simultaneously reduce flood risk, improve water quality, sequester carbon, and enhance biodiversity—delivering multiple benefits from a single investment.
The regulatory framework is beginning to recognise this potential. The Environment Agency now explicitly supports nature-based solutions for water storage, flow management, and ecosystem restoration. The Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 emphasises working in partnership at catchment scale and restoring habitats to more naturally functioning states.
Sector-Specific Applications and Opportunities
Water Infrastructure
The water sector faces an £11 billion investment programme over the next five years, primarily focused on storm overflow improvements. While much of this will fund traditional grey infrastructure, there are significant opportunities to integrate nature-based approaches. Constructed wetlands can provide tertiary treatment for wastewater effluent, removing nutrients and pollutants that conventional treatment struggles to address. Catchment-scale interventions—such as riparian buffer strips, floodplain reconnection, and strategic woodland planting—can reduce the volume and contamination of water entering sewerage systems in the first place.
The 2,500 storm overflows scheduled for improvement represent an opportunity to rethink drainage at the catchment scale. Rather than simply increasing pipe capacity, water companies could invest in upstream interventions that reduce runoff volumes and peak flows. This approach has proven effective internationally, with cities like Philadelphia achieving significant cost savings by combining green and grey infrastructure.
Highways and Transport Networks
Road runoff contributes significantly to the 18% of waterbodies that fail due to urban pollution. Highways carry a cocktail of contaminants—hydrocarbons, heavy metals, rubber particulates, and de-icing salts—directly into receiving waters during rainfall. Traditional drainage relies on kerbs, gullies, and pipes to remove this water quickly, but does nothing to treat it.
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) offer an alternative. Vegetated swales, filter strips, and rain gardens can capture and treat highway runoff before it reaches watercourses. These features also provide multiple co-benefits: reducing flood risk, cooling urban areas, supporting pollinators, and improving the aesthetic quality of transport corridors. Several local authorities have successfully retrofitted SuDS into existing highway networks, demonstrating that transformation doesn’t require complete reconstruction.
Development and Built Environment
The planning system provides leverage for embedding nature-based solutions. The report notes that the Environment Agency provides advice on the environmental viability of future development, considering sustainability and regulatory requirements. This presents an opportunity to shift from treating green infrastructure as an afterthought to making it fundamental to development design.
New developments can incorporate rain gardens, green roofs, permeable paving, and urban wetlands from the outset. These features manage surface water, reduce the burden on sewerage systems, improve air quality, and create attractive places for people to live and work. The biodiversity net gain requirement now creates an additional driver for developers to think beyond traditional landscaping toward genuinely functional green infrastructure.
Retrofitting existing built environments presents greater challenges but enormous potential. Many urban areas sit on combined sewerage systems where even modest reductions in surface water inflow can significantly decrease storm overflow operation. Street tree planting, green roofs on public buildings, and removal of non-permeable surfaces can all contribute to reducing the 450,398 annual storm overflow spills documented in the report.
Agriculture and Rural Land Management
Agricultural activities caused 74 serious pollution incidents in 2024, predominantly from dairy farming. While the report documents enforcement against poor practice—4,767 targeted farm inspections found 51% non-compliance—compliance alone won’t solve diffuse pollution affecting 40% of waterbodies.
Nature-based farming practices offer a path forward. Buffer strips along watercourses, wetland creation, soil health improvement, and precision nutrient management can dramatically reduce pollution while maintaining productivity.
DEFRA’s Environmental Land Management schemes increasingly recognise and reward these approaches. The Slurry Infrastructure Grant, mentioned in the report, represents the kind of targeted support needed—but the scale of investment must match the scale of the challenge.
Barriers to Implementation
Despite compelling evidence and growing regulatory support, nature-based solutions remain the exception rather than the rule. Several barriers impede their widespread adoption:
A Path Forward
Overcoming these barriers requires coordinated action across multiple fronts.
First, regulatory frameworks must evolve to actively favour nature-based solutions where appropriate, moving beyond simply permitting their use. The Environment Agency’s explicit support represents a start, but more fundamental reform is needed. Permitting processes could prioritise approaches that deliver multiple environmental benefits, and enforcement could recognise that preventing pollution at source deserves as much emphasis as controlling emissions at pipe end.
Second, funding mechanisms must support integrated, catchment-scale thinking. The £11 billion storm overflow investment programme offers an immediate opportunity. Rather than funding individual overflow improvements in isolation, this investment could support catchment partnerships developing integrated solutions that reduce overflow operation while delivering broader environmental benefits.
Third, capacity building deserves urgent attention. Professional institutions, universities, and regulators should collaborate to develop training programmes, share case studies, and build the skills base needed to deliver nature-based solutions at scale. The 227 public consultations the Environment Agency conducted in 2024 provide a mechanism for sharing knowledge and building understanding across sectors.
Finally, we need better evidence and metrics. Research programmes should quantify the multiple benefits of nature-based solutions in ways that support robust business cases. Long-term monitoring of implemented schemes will build confidence and identify best practices.
Conclusion
The Environment Agency’s report documents an environment under severe pressure. Despite extensive regulation and significant investment, water quality declines, pollution incidents increase, and climate pressures intensify. Continuing along the current trajectory will not achieve the outcomes we need.
Nature-based solutions offer an alternative: an approach that works with natural processes to deliver multiple benefits, building resilience while addressing the root causes of environmental degradation. The evidence for their effectiveness exists. The regulatory framework increasingly supports them. The economic case is clear.
What’s needed now is courage—to break down institutional silos, to invest for the long term rather than the short, to embrace approaches that require collaboration and integration rather than simple technical fixes. The next five years of water sector investment represents a crucial opportunity. We can continue pouring concrete into the ground, or we can start building infrastructure that works with nature rather than against it.
The choice, ultimately, isn’t just regulatory or technical—it’s about what kind of environment we want to create and whether we’re willing to make the changes necessary to achieve it. The evidence is clear. The question is whether we’ll act on it.
