What Are Nature-Based Solutions?

• July 8, 2026

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are actions that protect, sustainably manage, or restore ecosystems to tackle problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, while delivering benefits for both people and nature at the same time. The European Commission puts it simply: these are solutions inspired and supported by nature, cost-effective, and able to provide environmental, social, and economic benefits simultaneously. In the maritime world, this means working with the ocean’s own systems, kelp forests, reefs, salt marshes, and marine species, rather than fighting against them with concrete and chemicals.

Why the Ocean Needs This Approach

The ocean covers around 75% of the Earth’s surface when you count seas, coasts, and inland waters together, and it is under serious strain from pollution, overfishing, and habitat loss. The EU’s response, the Mission to Restore Our Ocean and Waters, set three clear targets for 2030: protect and restore marine ecosystems, eliminate pollution, and make the blue economy carbon-neutral and circular. That Mission runs in two phases, a development and piloting phase up to 2025, followed by a deployment and upscaling phase from 2026 to 2030, which is exactly where projects like PHAROS come in

The core idea is straightforward. Instead of building a concrete seawall to stop coastal erosion, you restore a reef or plant seagrass, and the ecosystem itself absorbs wave energy while also creating habitat, storing carbon, and supporting fisheries. IUCN gives a concrete example: building oyster reefs can protect coastlines from storm surges while filtering seawater and supporting local fishing communities, all from a single intervention.

One Analogy: The Multi-Tool Approach

Think of a nature-based solution like a Swiss Army knife rather than a single-purpose tool. A concrete breakwater does one job: it blocks waves. A restored reef or kelp forest does that same job, but also cleans the water, feeds fish, locks away carbon, and creates jobs for local communities, all with the same piece of “infrastructure.” That is the fundamental logic that separates NBS from traditional grey engineering.

How This Looks in Practice at Sea

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture, or IMTA, is one of the clearest maritime examples of NBS in action. It works by farming several species together at different levels of the food chain: fish produce waste, shellfish and sea cucumbers filter that waste out of the water, and seaweed absorbs the leftover nutrients while capturing carbon. The EU Mission to Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030 has formally identified IMTA as a key nature-based solution for exactly this reason.

Artificial reefs have also evolved well beyond dumping old tyres or concrete blocks into the sea. Smart Enhanced Reefs, for instance, use AI-driven design software to custom-build reef structures matched to the exact ecological and geological conditions of a specific site, giving nature a tailored head start to reclaim the space. Marine Protected Areas complete the picture: the EU has committed to protecting 30% of its seas by 2030, with 10% under strict protection, and coverage had reached 13.7% by 2023, so there is significant ground still to cover.

PHAROS and the 2026 Push

This is the exact moment PHAROS operates in. As a Horizon Europe project running from September 2024 to August 2029 and led by the Canary Islands Ocean Platform (PLOCAN), PHAROS is deploying four NBS demonstrations across the Atlantic and Arctic basins to bridge the EU Mission’s piloting phase into its 2026-2030 upscaling phase. Its demos combine IMTA, Smart Enhanced Reef restoration, marine forest cultivation, and eDNA-based invasive species monitoring in Iceland, all designed not just to work technically but to be replicated across dozens of Atlantic islands and Arctic sites afterward.

What makes PHAROS distinct is that it does not treat NBS as a purely technical fix. The project builds “Living Labs” of fishers, local businesses, schools, and citizens in every demo site, because a restored reef or seaweed farm only survives long-term if the community around it understands it and has a stake in its success. PHAROS is also pairing its NBS demos with a Digital Twin Ocean, a real-time virtual model of each site, so managers can monitor how the restoration is actually performing and adjust course early rather than after damage is done.

Why This Matters for the Blue Economy in 2026

Nature-based solutions are not charity work for the ocean, they are increasingly a business case. PHAROS partners are actively developing business plans around commercial byproducts of restoration, from high-value abalone and macroalgae in IMTA systems to payment schemes for ecosystem services like carbon capture and clean water. That reframes marine restoration as an investable part of the blue economy rather than a cost center, which is precisely the shift the EU is banking on to hit its 2030 targets while this deployment phase unfolds through 2026.

The bigger lesson from all of this is that nature-based solutions succeed only when they combine ecological science, engineering, and honest community buy-in. A reef, a seaweed farm, or a protected marine corridor will not restore itself just because it has been designed well on paper, it needs the people living alongside it to see a reason to protect it.