Federal Permitting and Environmental Reviews for Nature-Based Solutions: A Best-Practices Guide

This is a permanent archive of the report, originally posted on epa.gov. From the Introduction:

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are actions to protect, conserve, restore, and sustainably manage natural or modified ecosystems. They use natural features or processes to address public health and environmental challenges while providing multiple benefits to people and nature.1 One of the benefits of NBS is reducing risks such as flooding, drought, wildfire, and urban heat (Warnell et al., 2023). NBS can also improve water and air quality while supporting biodiversity and habitat connectivity. These benefits positively impact communities by helping them increase resiliency, improve health, and increase access to nature.

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The Green Infrastructure Federal Collaborative (GIFC) is an effort that fosters engagement and cooperations between federal agencies that actively work to promote the implementation of green infrastructure and NBS. The GIFC developed this guide to help implement the White House NatureBased Solutions Roadmap by identifying ways to accelerate federal permitting and environmental reviews for NBS projects. This document is intended to provide federal agencies involved in the review of NBS projects with an overview of the federal permitting and environmental review processes related to NBS implementation; best practices recommendations; and examples of NBS projects and successful federal agency permitting networks that have navigated and streamlined these reviews and processes. Ultimately, environmental permitting and approval is project-specific and will depend on the unique characteristics of each project (e.g., location, design, use of federal funding). This guide is meant to further progress towards streamlining the process for implementing NBS projects.