Join the dots

Siloed thinking and behaviours have contributed to today’s biodiversity and climate emergencies. Systems thinking and collaboration are key to the solution, write Julia Baker, Michelle Mortlock and Rebecca Shadlock.

In England it will become mandatory later in 2023 for projects seeking planning permission to achieve biodiversity net gain (BNG) – whereby projects to create new buildings and infrastructure need to provide a greater richness and sustainability of flora and fauna than existed before. It is a measure to counteract the sharp decline in the number and diversity of Britain’s animal and plant species, which is part of a global biodiversity crisis linked to the climate emergency, social inequality and the depletion of natural resources.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2023 Global Risks Report cites the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem collapse as one of the world’s top 10 risks over the next decade.

How our built environment is designed, constructed, used and managed has a profound impact on the richness of the natural environment and the health and sustainability of natural systems, which in turn impact us all – think of its importance for our physical and mental health, and its role in providing clean water, air filtration, carbon sequestration, crop pollination, flood defence, urban cooling, and much more.

That was recognised in January 2023 when the WEF launched the Davos Baukultur Alliance, with Mott MacDonald as a founding member. The concept of Baukultur is concerned with holistically creating a built environment that is good for people.

There is a fundamental link between the quality of people’s lives and the sustainability and resilience of the built environment. Therefore, we need to manage and develop it purposefully. Placing society and the environment alongside the economy and technology is a shift that is essential for addressing many of today’s most pressing challenges, including the climate and biodiversity emergencies and social inequality. Public and private sector collaboration is essential for achieving change on the scale required.

From principles to practice

To achieve a baukultur that benefits people and nature requires collaboration between countries and regions, sectors, organisations, disciplines, projects and supply chains.

Collaboration needs to be informed by systems awareness and thinking – recognising the interconnectedness and interdependency of the built and natural environments, and of economic, social and environmental outcomes.

Better outcomes can be advanced through collaborative thinking at:

• Policy level, connecting and integrating policies for climate change, biodiversity, social inclusion and infrastructure development.
• Place level (cities, regions and local areas), enabling local collaboration to determine priorities and supporting local approaches that create a better understanding of cause and effect relating to investment, behaviours, risks, opportunities and benefits.
• Project level, by accurately and holistically calculating impacts – both through integrated measurement and reporting of biodiversity, carbon, social and other metrics, and by accounting for carbon sequestration alongside capital and operational carbon emissions.

But more than thinking is required for successful collaboration. Collaboration is enabled by a ‘pyramid’ of principles:

• Enact: collaborative leadership; vision and values; relationship management
• Engage: trust and commitment to mutual benefit; business objectives; collaborative competence and behaviour
• Enable: value creation; governance and processes; information and knowledge sharing; risk management; relationship measurement and optimisation; exit strategy

The ‘pyramid’ of collaboration principles, plus stakeholder engagement and participatory project development, are fundamental.

Early movers

We are now starting to see collaborative approaches to planning and engineering that are addressing biodiversity, climate change and social outcomes – siloed thinking is gradually being broken down.

In 2020 Water UK, representing all the country’s water companies, produced a net zero routemap for the sector, authored by Mott MacDonald. It highlighted the importance of landscape enrichment, including wetland, peatland, grassland and woodland restoration – providing landscape-scale BNG – as part of an overall carbon reduction and compensation strategy. The routemap highlighted the importance of collaboration between water companies and landowners, including infrastructure owners and operators in other sectors. The principles of the Water UK routemap are progressively being translated by water companies to produce organisational routemaps.

UK water companies are pioneering catchment-scale approaches to water management, to balance the long-term needs of consumers and the environment. Mott MacDonald has worked on strategies for the south and south-east regions of England. It involves collaboration between all stakeholders in those areas – water companies, industry, local authorities, government, regulators, NGOs, and infrastructure owners and operators.

Working with the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment, we supported development of the Physical Climate Resilience Assessment Methodology (PCRAM) in 2022, which encourages infrastructure owners and investors to consider nature-based solutions alongside ‘hard’ resilience solutions. PCRAM enables infrastructure owners and investors to assess their exposure to climate risks, and to identify and assess resilience options. The scope and scale of climate risks means that developing and implementing successful options frequently requires collaboration between several organisations.

Updated, expanded and relaunched in April 2023, the international specification for managing carbon across buildings and infrastructure, PAS 2080, recognises that without collaboration it will be impossible to cut emissions to the extent required to halt climate change. Collaboration is required within organisations to cut carbon at portfolio scale, between organisations within sectors to cut carbon at system scale, and between sectors to cut carbon at a national scale. This includes industry collaborating with agriculture and forestry to achieve carbon sequestration, which is often allied with BNG.

At Mott MacDonald we use a six-step decision framework for nature-based solutions that can promote BNG. It aims to consider nature from the start of planning investment objectives to maximise co-benefits, and increase confidence around performance, costs and maintenance.

1. Establish a shared vision
   Look at what outcomes and co-benefits can be achieved in addition to the main project objectives. This requires systems thinking and broad stakeholder engagement.
2. Identify the options for nature-based solutions
   Identify the range of options available, drawing on broad-based expertise, considering opportunities for innovation and drawing on past experience.
3. Quantify a range of benefits from each solution and agree a preferred option
   Consider shared responsibilities and benefits over the lifetime of the solution. Monetising co-benefits can help drive change and secure funding. Use a benefits framework and multi-criteria decision analysis to assess options.
4. Finalise design and prepare for construction
   The design process should be participatory, involving all stakeholders, and focus on the specific circumstances of a place.
5. Implementation
   Assign clear roles and responsibilities and incentivise each party to add value throughout the project lifecycle.
6. Maintain, monitor, evaluate and learn
   Collect evidence over time on performance, costs and maintenance, and apply the learning to future projects.

The approach has informed solutions in the water and transport sectors, including flood protection for the city of Leeds, UK, control of combined sewer overflows in New York’s Bowery Bay, USA, and the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road in East Sussex.

All together

The biodiversity and climate emergencies are too big and complex for any one organisation to tackle alone. But they are solvable if we work together, collaborate, together. Collaboration takes effort and investment but creates co-benefits, positively changing the business case for action to address risks and opportunities.