Executive summary – Engineering a nature-positive future

Nature faces an unprecedented crisis. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate – faster than at any other time in human history – with average extinction rates estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times higher than those observed over the past tens of millions of years. We are now confronted with a triple planetary crisis encompassing climate change, biodiversity loss, and widespread pollution. These are not isolated challenges, but interconnected symptoms of unsustainable human activity. This is more than an environmental concern; it represents an existential threat with cascading economic and social consequences that affect every aspect of human civilisation.

Engineers play a central role in shaping the built environment, ensuring it is safe, functional, fit for purpose, and meets the needs of society. Yet, we cannot ignore the significant role that the built environment has played in contributing to carbon emissions, habitat loss and resource depletion. Engineers now have both the opportunity and responsibility to serve as a key leverage point for nature recovery. Realising this potential requires systematic incorporation of nature-positive principles into their practice, ensuring that future development and the enhancement of nature go hand-in-hand to help meet global biodiversity and climate goals.

This foresight review explores the emerging field of Nature-Positive Engineering (NPE) through an in-depth exploration of three key sectors where engineering and natural systems interact significantly: coastal protection and adaptation; ports; and offshore renewable energy. The insights gathered aim to bring clarity, catalyse action within the engineering community, and support the safe, scaled adoption of NPE. Its findings and recommendations are designed to be relevant to all stakeholders involved in infrastructure development and transferable across all sectors.

NPE is a transformative approach that redefines the purpose and impact of engineering in our world. It involves actively protecting, restoring, and enhancing natural systems to deliver measurable ecological gains while simultaneously supporting societal wellbeing. NPE goes beyond sustainability’s focus on ‘doing less harm’ to embrace a proactive model of ‘doing more good,’ positioning nature as a partner and ally in building resilient, thriving societies. It recognises nature as infrastructure in its own right, providing vital ecosystem services such as water purification, climate regulation, and coastal protection. NPE is a key pathway for implementing nature-positive infrastructure. 

NPE requires embedding ecological principles throughout the entire infrastructure lifecycle – from concept and planning to implementation, operation, and decommissioning. By making nature gains a central design objective – alongside safety, efficiency, and functionality – engineers can demonstrate that infrastructure development and nature recovery can be mutually reinforcing, building environments that are both nature- and people-positive.

The review identifies ten guiding principles to support NPE implementation:

1. Foster a mutually enhancing Human-Nature relationship 
2. Take a whole lifecycle approach to ecological impacts 
3. Deliver measurable nature improvements 
4. Recognise interconnectedness across scales and timeframes 
5. Co-develop solutions with communities and Indigenous Peoples 
6. Design multifunctional, regenerative systems 
7. Manage complex risks and trade-offs 
8. Address the climate-nature-health nexus through adaptive management
9. Foster interdisciplinary collaboration 
10. Anticipate and manage potential unintended consequences

Innovative solutions aligned with NPE principles are already being implemented across the key sectors examined in this review, with coastal protection and adaptation demonstrating the greatest maturity. These examples demonstrate that implementation of NPE can lead to multiple benefits, from enhanced biodiversity and ecological resilience to improved community protection, human wellbeing, and economic opportunity. Central to future solutions is harnessing technology to scale up, and addressing the complex climate-nature-health nexus, with a better understanding and management of associated risks and trade-offs.

However, significant barriers persist, including fragmented policy, undervaluation of nature, limited financing, outdated technical standards, and a workforce in need of upskilling to address interdisciplinary challenges. Scaling NPE demands systemic transformation and coordinated action among stakeholders, focusing on the following key enablers:

• Policy frameworks that mandate biodiversity enhancement 
• Financial mechanisms that recognise nature’s true value  
• Market incentives creating commercial attractiveness 
• Educational approaches bridging engineering, ecology, and social sciences 
• Upskilling current and future engineering workforces 
• Research building a strong evidence base for practice 
• Technical standards and guidance specific to nature-positive approaches
• Advocacy and partnerships to scale impact across sector

Robust measurement, standardised frameworks, and long-term monitoring are essential for establishing NPE practices and scaling their implementation, incentivising investment, and demonstrating progress towards sustainable, resilient futures. Success will depend on interdisciplinary collaboration – bringing together engineers, ecologists, social scientists, economists, and local communities to co-design effective, equitable, and future-proof solutions. Industry and academia will play crucial roles in embedding nature-positivity into engineering practice and education.

To accelerate NPE, this review offers recommendations across three areas:

1. Create an enabling environment, including policies that leverage technology for integrated planning, embed biodiversity outcomes in permitting and procurement, and align finance with natural capital risk frameworks. 
2. Building technical capacity through guidance to implement NPE across the lifecycle, a toolkit to design for interconnected climate-nature-health risks, standardised biodiversity metrics, case study research, and integrating NPE into education and professional development. 
3. Advocacy and partnerships, establishing a global engineering NPE alliance and community of practice for knowledge sharing and policy influence, alongside targeted communications to policymakers, investors, and communities showcasing examples of successful NPE implementation.

Engineers must now find their voice in the global nature-positive movement. Each year of delay increases both the cost of action and the risk of irreversible damage to the complex living systems that support human health and safety, and deliver ecosystem services. The science is clear: restoring nature is one of our most powerful tools for creating a sustainable and resilient future. By embracing NPE principles, engineers can reshape human development to place nature and society at the heart of design, moving beyond harm minimisation towards recovery within planetary boundaries,1 and fostering a more inclusive, equitable, and safer world where people and nature thrive together.