Harnessing Community Science to Support Implementation and Success of Nature-Based Solutions

Abstract

Community science (CS), a type of community-based participatory research, plays a crucial role in advancing wide-reaching environmental education and awareness by leveraging the collective power of volunteer participants who contribute to research efforts. The low barriers of entry and well-established methods of participatory monitoring have potential to enable community participant involvement in applications of nature-based solutions (NbS). However, a better understanding of the current state of community-based approaches within NbS could improve feasibility for researchers and practitioners to implement community-based approaches in NbS. Based on the current literature, we discern five community science approaches that support NbS: (1) Environmental monitoring to determine baseline conditions; (2) Involvement of participants in NbS development and planning through discussions and workshops (i.e., co-design of NbS); (3) Using existing CS databases to support NbS design and implementation; (4) Determining the impacts and measuring effectiveness of NbS; and (5) Participation in multifunctional activities. While there are various avenues of participation, we find that CS-driven environmental monitoring (i.e., actions that involve observing, measuring, and assessing environmental parameters and conditions over time) emerges as a cornerstone of planning, implementing, and maintaining the success of NbS. As the proliferation of NbS implementation continues, future work to integrate community-based monitoring studies in NbS applications has potential, albeit far from guaranteed, to improve place-based and local societal and ecological outcomes.