From Risk to Shared Resilience: Co-Creating Nature-Based Solutions in Small Catchments in Southern Sweden

Across many regions, flood and drought events are becoming more frequent, negatively impacting livelihoods, infrastructure, and safety. In recent years, Trelleborg, a significant agricultural region in southern Sweden, has experienced an increase in flood events, in addition to previous large-scale issues with nutrient management entering the Baltic. Stakeholders are concerned, which has led to the implementation of several nature-based solutions (NBS) to manage the small streams flowing through agricultural landscapes. These measures include wetland creation, stream re-meandering, and riparian zone restoration, targeting not only water-related risk management but also showing great promise in enhancing biodiversity and creating new areas for recreation. Building upon existing knowledge and projects developed over the last decade, Trelleborg’s small streams and bottom-up NBS initiatives provide a valuable opportunity to examine diverse NBS across both agricultural and urban contexts. This project focuses on the co-creation of knowledge around previously implemented NBS, where researchers support an already engaged community through evaluation and recommendations for future work, utilizing modeling, mapping, and synthesis of information provided by different actors. The study identifies key success factors that enable NBS to meet objectives, such as flood risk reduction and biodiversity enhancement, while also highlighting areas that require careful evaluation prior to implementation, including nutrient retention, where outcomes are mixed. Further, scalability and transferability to similar stream systems are also discussed. Overall, the findings indicate that small-scale NBS have the potential to foster acceptance and capacity, enhance perceptions and local understanding of NBS, and promote shifts from viewing farmers as a source of environmental problems to recognizing them as environmental stewards.