RESILIENT BY NATURE: INTEGRATING CLIMATE RESILIENCE WITH BIODIVERSITY NET GAIN

CIEEM’s newly released guidance, Resilient by Nature: A Process to Integrate Climate Resilience with Biodiversity Net Gain, represents a significant shift in how we approach ecological design and assessment in the UK.

For some time, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) has been framed primarily as a metric-based requirement achieved at the point of planning consent. However, this guidance highlights an increasingly critical issue: schemes designed only for compliance at consent may not remain ecologically functional under future climate conditions.

We are designing landscapes within a system of accelerating environmental change—where climate stability can no longer be assumed.

A Changing Climatic Baseline

Observed trends from the Met Office indicate a pattern of warming temperatures, increasingly wet winters, and longer, drier summer periods, interspersed with more frequent extremes. These shifts are already influencing habitat condition, species distribution, and ecological resilience.

Water scarcity is increasing, leading to reduced habitat diversity and function in certain landscapes. Conversely, intense rainfall events are placing additional pressure on hydrological systems. Habitats are no longer responding to a single driver of change but to multiple, interacting stressors operating simultaneously.

Extreme weather events are no longer exceptional—they are becoming part of the annual baseline condition.

Implications for Habitat Design and BNG

The success of BNG cannot be separated from climate resilience. Habitats created or enhanced through development must be able to function under future climatic variability, not just current conditions.

Without this consideration, there is a risk that habitats may degrade towards their ecological tipping points more rapidly than anticipated, undermining both biodiversity outcomes and long-term investment in green infrastructure.

A key challenge is that not all impacts are linear or predictable. Multiple stressors—heat, drought, flooding, wind exposure, and anthropogenic pressure—often interact, amplifying ecological stress beyond what single-factor assessments may suggest.

The CIEEM 4-Step Resilience Process

The guidance sets out a structured approach for integrating climate resilience into BNG delivery:

1. Gather climate data (baseline and projections)This includes both historical observed datasets (e.g. 1981–2000 climate baseline) and future projections using Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), such as RCP 8.5. Climate variables should be considered across daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual scales, including temperature, precipitation, wind speed, humidity, sea level rise, and snow cover.

2. Assess year-round climate risks to BNG habitatsThis step evaluates how proposed habitats may respond to climatic stressors throughout the full annual cycle, rather than at a single snapshot in time.

3. Identify resilience measures within design and HMMPsDesign responses may include habitat diversification, shading strategies, structural variation, and integrated water management features such as retention systems that both attenuate flood risk and provide drought resilience.

4. Identify opportunities for wider landscape resilienceThis includes linking habitats into ecological networks that support species movement and adaptation at a landscape scale.

Relevant data sources include the Met Office Local Authority Climate Service and national Climate Risk Indicators, including wildfire risk datasets.

Design Implications and Professional Practice

For larger or more complex projects, climate resilience input may increasingly require collaboration with dedicated climate specialists. However, landscape architects and ecologists already play a critical role in interpreting and applying climate information within design frameworks.

The key challenge lies in translating climate uncertainty into actionable design decisions. This is not straightforward, particularly when attempting to assign monetary or unit-based value to resilience outcomes.

However, decision paralysis should not be the outcome of uncertainty. Instead, structured climate risk-benefit assessments can be used to demonstrate how resilience interventions reduce long-term ecological and operational risk, even where some uncertainty remains.

Conclusion

BNG provides a powerful opportunity to enhance biodiversity, but its long-term success depends on embedding climate resilience from the outset.

As practitioners, we are being asked to move beyond compliance-driven design and towards systems that anticipate change, absorb stress, and continue to function under increasing climatic pressure.

In this context, resilience is not an optional enhancement—it is fundamental to whether Biodiversity Net Gain can truly deliver meaningful, long-term ecological benefit.

🔗 CIEEM guidance:https://cieem.net/resource/resilient-by-nature-a-process-to-integrate-climate-resilience-with-biodiversity-net-gain/