From concept to practice: What contractors and consultants reveal about implementing nature-based solutions

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly promoted in global initiatives for their potential to address interconnected socio-environmental challenges and support transformative ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation. Yet, the shift from ambition to action remains limited, as traditional ‘grey’ infrastructure continues to dominate planning and investment decisions. This dominance is reinforced by strong path dependencies in engineering practice, procurement routines, and institutional expectations, making it difficult for NbS to compete on equal terms. While extensive research has explored systemic barriers and enablers for NbS uptake, far less attention has been given to the practical challenges and opportunities encountered by private-sector professionals, such as contractors and consultants, who operate at the core of the implementation process. Understanding their experiences is essential for moving from high-level NbS ambitions toward scalable and transformative practice.

To address this gap, we conducted interviews with 17 contractors and consultants across Europe who have worked directly on NbS projects. Our findings reveal a range of persistent challenges, including limited NbS-specific expertise and skills, difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified staff, insufficient evidence of NbS performance, market demand uncertainties, and lack of clear standards and regulatory guidance. Additional obstacles arise from constrained funding streams that restrict opportunities to engage in NbS work, competition with established grey-infrastructure providers, siloed mindsets among project owners, administrative burdens, and concerns about liability and risk distribution.

Despite these constraints, professionals also identified strategic opportunities that could help strengthen and scale NbS implementation. These include expanding cross-sectoral collaboration, making better use of existing data and technological tools, capitalising on the growth of green markets, building multidisciplinary teams, and increasing training, communication, and awareness efforts. We recommend future research on the specific expertise required across different NbS categories and professional roles. Such knowledge is necessary to build the sector’s capacities and employment opportunities, counteract existing path dependencies, and enable more durable and transformative scaling of NbS in practice, thereby securing their critical biodiversity benefits.