Inclusion of Nature-Based Solutions in Urban River Management Plan

The basic design and philosophy of an Urban River Management Plan (URMP) ensures that it is simple, measurable, synergistic, sustainable, generic, and replicable. The environmental attributes of the URMP are keeping the river pollution free, ensuring effective regulation of activities in floodplains, rejuvenating water bodies and wetlands, enhancing riparian buffer of the river, adopting increased reuse of treated wastewater, and ensuring maximum good quality return flow from city in the river. Nature-based solutions (NbS) are an important intervention category to be applied, monitored, and evaluated for river management. This research highlights the possibility of including nature-based solutions in URMP and existing issues in implementing these solutions as a part of the management plan. The study also identifies the role played by NbS in trophic status and water quality assessment of urban rivers. Based on the review and analysis of the aspects, this study adopts a system thinking approach to provide evidence-based suggestions to re-include NbS in European URMP. From the review, absolute study characteristics have been identified and a defined quantitative quality assessment has been done to assess the existing critical gaps. This research ascertains that inclusion of NbS in URMP requires a critical, evaluative, and analytical approach with a great emphasis on the ecosystem services and its relevance to these solutions in maintaining the trophic status and water quality in rivers and downstream waterbodies such as transitional and coastal waters.