- Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) offer cost-effective and efficient alternatives to protect social infrastructure from floods, extreme heat, hurricanes, and other severe climate events.
- IDB projects demonstrate tangible benefits such as energy savings, flood reduction, improved water management, and increased urban and coastal resilience through green roofs, vertical gardens, rainwater harvesting systems, green infrastructure, and ecosystem restoration.
- Investing in NbS yields high economic returns and strengthens communities, but it requires technical capacity, planning, and institutional support—areas where the IDB plays a key role in assisting countries.
Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean faces multiple challenges due to natural phenomena such as floods, storms, and extreme heat, which threaten the quality of life of millions of people. The Caribbean, for example, faces annual infrastructure losses of approximately $12.5 billion due to hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods.
In this context, Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) offer a low-cost alternative for protecting social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and homes. NbS are actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address social challenges in an effective and adaptive manner. This can include natural elements such as “green infrastructure” that help mitigate climate and environmental risks.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) supports countries in the region in developing and incorporating these solutions into projects across different sectors and has also published a guide to help developers prepare sustainable infrastructure projects using NbS.
Investments in resilience projects, such as NbS, yield an economic return of four dollars for every dollar invested. This benefit can translate into greater social investments, according to a study by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.
Green roofs and vertical gardens are examples of NbS that can improve the energy efficiency of buildings, reduce the urban heat island effect, and manage rainwater. They can be implemented in schools, hospitals, and public buildings to improve resilience, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality.
Benefits include:
- Rainwater management: Retain runoff during heavy rains, reducing the risk of flooding.
- Extreme wind mitigation: Vertical gardens absorb and disperse wind force during cyclones and hurricanes, protecting windows and facades.
- Energy savings: An IDB study shows that green roofs can significantly reduce energy consumption.
In Belize, the IDB financed a school-laboratory in Belize City that includes a green façade to protect against solar radiation and improve classroom comfort. Combined with other architectural and technological solutions, this measure helped the building achieve 24% energy savings compared with traditional buildings, validated by obtaining the EDGE certification seal.
In Colombia, the company Groncol has developed more than 150,000 m² of green roofs and vertical gardens in urban environments, improving stormwater management, air quality, and generating energy savings. Green roofs can retain up to 90% of rainwater, reduce runoff, and reuse organic waste, while improving insulation to reduce energy consumption by 10–20% and increasing property values by 10%. These are durable systems that facilitate building maintenance. The IDB recognized Groncol as an example of social innovation and sustainability in the region.
These systems reduce the demand for drinking water, lower the risk of flooding, and strengthen the resilience of buildings and cities in the face of droughts or service interruptions. They create water autonomy in emergency situations and climate crises.
By leveraging natural resources, rainwater harvesting systems reduce the need for costly drainage and storage infrastructure and generate savings in the operation and maintenance of public services. In transportation, agencies in the region have implemented sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) with permeable pavements, infiltration trenches, and swales.
One example is the Comprehensive Electromobility and Resilience Project for Public Transportation Infrastructure in Panama City, financed by the IDB. It includes a sustainable stormwater drainage system to mitigate flooding near bus routes, accompanied by urban landscaping.
Buildings can also reuse rainwater for purposes such as irrigating green spaces or supplying sanitation systems, reducing waste and ensuring alternative water sources. The IDB’s recent publication Water and Sanitation in Schools: Planning and Designing Sanitation Facilities concludes that integrating water storage systems is a key strategy for resilience.
Parks, green corridors, and conservation areas help absorb rainwater, reduce flooding, and improve air quality.
The CityAdapt project in Xalapa, Mexico, implemented NbS to manage water resources and reduce flood risk. Actions included creating parks and green corridors with more than 6,000 plants and 3,900 trees to reduce landslide and erosion risks, improve water regulation, and restore watersheds to strengthen urban resilience. Additional measures included infiltration gardens, resilient orchards, and silvopastoral systems to promote food security and sustainable soil management. The project also built an artificial wetland as a learning model for wastewater treatment and installed 12 rainwater harvesting systems in schools and public buildings.
In the San Salvador Metropolitan Area, with IDB support, an urban green infrastructure strategy was developed to strengthen resilience to floods and heat waves. The initiative included training municipal technicians using tools such as i-Tree to assess ecosystem services and developing a roadmap to integrate green corridors and urban parks.
Restoring ecosystems such as wetlands, rivers, and coastal areas is essential to improving urban and territorial resilience. These natural spaces regulate the water cycle, reduce flood risks, and provide multiple environmental and economic benefits to communities.
Restoring wetlands and mangroves is key to urban and coastal resilience because they act as natural sponges that store and release rainwater, reducing flood risk. Additional benefits include:
- Protecting coastlines from erosion and reducing storm damage to infrastructure, avoiding millions in reconstruction costs.
- Providing essential habitats for biodiversity, ensuring the sustainability of natural resources.
- Absorbing large amounts of carbon, helping mitigate extreme climate impacts.
In the Dominican Republic, starting in 2026, the IDB will finance projects to improve the sustainability and resilience of coastal areas, including coral and mangrove restoration to control coastal erosion on 25 beaches. These projects will combine gray and green infrastructure solutions, based on solid diagnostics and studies, with a strong commitment to NbS—such as restoring and protecting reefs, seagrass beds, and mangroves; decompacting and/or reconstructing coastal dunes; revegetating coastal areas with endemic and native species; and building coastal erosion control structures such as dikes, breakwaters, and jetties.
As the examples discussed in this post show, NbS offer an innovative and cost-effective alternative for increasing resilience in infrastructure projects—from buildings to cities and regions. By integrating them into the design of schools, hospitals, public buildings, and urban areas, we not only strengthen our communities’ capacity to withstand climate threats but also generate tangible savings in energy, water, and maintenance.
Implementing NbS is not without challenges. These include a lack of local technical expertise, limited knowledge about the most appropriate solutions for each context, and underestimating maintenance requirements. In this scenario, the IDB can play a key role by providing specialized technical assistance, generating knowledge and best practices, and strengthening institutional capacities to ensure these solutions are integrated effectively and sustainably into projects.
Do you know of any interesting experiences in implementing NbS in the region? We would love to hear about them!