By Dr. Satya Prakash Mehra

Dr. Satya Prakash Mehra explores NatureScaping™ as a tool to connect ecosystem health, water security and social inclusion to strengthen climate-resilient WASH

Climate change is increasingly experienced through water. Droughts can reduce the reliability of water sources; intense rainfall and flooding can damage water and sanitation infrastructure and contaminate supplies; and ecosystem degradation can amplify both water scarcity and water-related hazards. For WASH practitioners, this raises an important question: Can we build climate-resilient WASH systems without also restoring the ecological systems that sustain water?

The concept of NatureScaping™ begins with a simple proposition: healthy ecosystems are not merely the background to WASH—they are part of its resilience infrastructure.

NatureScaping™ is an integrated approach to landscape stewardship that brings together ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, sustainable livelihoods and community participation. Its relevance to WASH lies in reconnecting the service-delivery perspective with the ecological landscapes upon which water security ultimately depends.

NatureScaping™ connects ecosystem health, water security and social inclusion to strengthen climate-resilient WASH. The framework complements—not replaces—engineered WASH solutions by integrating ecological processes and community stewardship into resilience planning.

From WASH infrastructure to WASH landscapes

Climate-resilient WASH has rightly encouraged practitioners to assess climate risks, strengthen infrastructure, diversify water sources, improve technologies and prepare services for extreme events. UNICEF’s climate-resilient WASH guidance, for example, emphasises understanding climate risks and embedding climate considerations into WASH programming.

NatureScaping™ adds another layer to this thinking: look upstream, look across the landscape, and look at the ecological processes that make WASH possible.

A borewell, treatment plant, piped network or sanitation facility may be technically resilient, but its long-term performance can still be undermined if groundwater recharge areas are degraded, catchments are eroded, wetlands are lost, rivers are polluted or vegetation that regulates runoff has disappeared.

This suggests a shift from thinking about WASH as a collection of facilities towards thinking about WASH as part of a living landscape.

What can nature contribute?

Healthy ecosystems perform functions that directly support water security. Wetlands can retain and filter water. Vegetated catchments can slow runoff and reduce erosion. Healthy soils can improve infiltration and groundwater recharge. Riparian vegetation can protect waterways and provide habitat. Restored landscapes can also moderate some impacts of floods, drought and heat.

These are not arguments for replacing engineered WASH infrastructure with nature. Rather, they point towards hybrid resilience—combining appropriate engineering with ecological processes.

The emerging international agenda increasingly recognises this connection. UNICEF’s climate-resilient WASH guidance, UN-Water’s work on nature-based solutions, and recent work of the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasise the connections among climate resilience, ecosystems, biodiversity, water and human health.

Learning from landscapes

Chak Ramnagar, Rajasthan, India: a community–landscape approach to water resilience (The Environment & Poverty Times)

Chak Ramnagar village in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India provides a particularly relevant field example. Under CSR supported Project Boond-V (2009–10) of Rajputana Society of Natural History (RSNH), water-conservation interventions combined water-harvesting structures, restoration and construction of local water bodies, appropriate construction techniques and community participation.

The intervention extended beyond physical infrastructure. Local knowledge, community mobilisation, women’s participation and village-level stewardship were integrated into the process. The experience demonstrates that water resilience can emerge when hydrology, ecological processes, appropriate infrastructure and community ownership are addressed together.

The Chak Ramnagar experience is one of the field-based precedents that informed the subsequent evolution of the NatureScaping™ approach.

Beira, Mozambique: green–grey urban resilience (World Bank Case Study)

Similarly, contemporary urban resilience projects demonstrate how ecological restoration can complement infrastructure. In Beira, Mozambique, restoration of degraded mangroves and native vegetation along the Chiveve River was integrated with an urban park, helping restore the river’s flood-retention function while creating social and livelihood benefits.

These examples point towards a broader principle: resilience increases when water management, ecosystem management and community development are planned together.

Making WASH more inclusive in a changing climate

The word inclusive is particularly important.

Climate impacts are not experienced equally. Water scarcity, flooding, ecosystem degradation and service disruptions can disproportionately affect people whose livelihoods and daily lives depend directly on local natural resources. Women, children, older people, people with disabilities, low-income households and marginalised communities may face particular barriers to accessing safe WASH services.

NatureScaping™ therefore treats communities not simply as beneficiaries of restoration or WASH projects, but as knowledge holders, decision-makers and custodians of landscapes.

The Chak Ramnagar experience illustrates this principle: community participation and women’s involvement were integrated into water-source management and local stewardship. Local knowledge can reveal seasonal water pathways, traditional water sources, ecological indicators and changes in landscape condition that may not appear in conventional engineering assessments. Bringing this knowledge into WASH planning can improve both relevance and ownership.

Basai Wetland, Gurugram: the wider urban ecological landscape

Basai Wetland in Gurugram, Haryana, provides an Indian urban-wetland illustration of why WASH resilience needs to be considered within the wider ecological landscape. The wetland’s ecological functions include hydrological regulation, groundwater recharge, water-quality improvement, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, microclimate regulation and regional ecological connectivity.

For a NatureScaping™ perspective, the significance of such landscapes extends beyond biodiversity conservation alone. Protecting the ecological processes associated with wetlands can contribute to the wider resilience of urban water systems, while maintaining habitat, ecosystem services and community benefits.

Towards a NatureScaping™–WASH continuum

The opportunity is to move beyond a false distinction between “nature” and “infrastructure”.

A resilient WASH system can include protected catchments, restored wetlands, recharge zones, rainwater harvesting, sustainable groundwater management, green infrastructure, resilient sanitation, appropriate treatment technologies, renewable energy and strong community institutions—designed as components of one interconnected system.

This is the NatureScaping™–WASH continuum: from ecosystem health, through water security and resilient infrastructure, to inclusive services and community well-being.

The emerging Climate Resilient Inclusive WASH community of practice provides an ideal space to explore this connection further. It can bring practitioners, academics, students and communities together to exchange not only technologies and research, but also landscape-based experiences and practical learning.

The central message is therefore simple:

To make WASH climate-resilient, we must also make the landscapes that sustain WASH resilient.

NatureScaping™ offers one way of making that connection visible—linking biodiversity, ecosystems, water, infrastructure and people within a common resilience framework. The future of climate-resilient WASH may therefore lie not only in building stronger systems, but in restoring the ecological relationships that allow those systems to endure.

Further reading

• Climate-resilient WASH: UNICEF Guidance Note on Climate Resilient WASH (https://www.unicef.org/documents/unicef-guidance-note-climate-resilient-wash)
• Nature-based Solutions for Water: UN World Water Development Report (https://www.unwater.org/news/un-world-water-development-report-2018-nature-based-solutions-water)
• Green–grey infrastructure: World Bank case study from Beira, Mozambique (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2022/01/31/building-resilience-through-green-gray-infrastructure-lessons-from-beira)
• Nature, biodiversity and health: WHO policy brief on Nature-based Solutions (https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/policy-brief–protecting-health-and-biodiversity-through-nature-based-solutions)
• GRID-Arendal & UNEP: The Environment & Poverty Times (2012) 07: 12-13. (http://www.grida.no/publications/et/ep7)] Water conservation through community participation

Author Bio

Dr. Satya Prakash Mehra is an environmental scientist and practitioner working at the intersection of biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, climate resilience, sustainable livelihoods and nature-based approaches to development. He is associated with Vasudha Ecosystems Global LLP (VEG-Bharat), Rajputana Society of Natural History (RSNH) and the Global Forum for Sustainable Rural Development (GFSRD). His work focuses on connecting ecological science with community stewardship and sustainable development through the emerging NatureScaping™ framework.

He has worked on biodiversity assessment, ecosystem management, conservation planning, environmental sustainability and landscape-based approaches that seek to strengthen the relationship between people and nature.