Eight recommendations to enhance biodiversity outcomes of nature-based solutions at multiple scales

Ambitions to mainstream Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and achieve global implementation are hampered by the lack of transdisciplinary integration across disciplines and practice. Ecological knowledge, including an understanding of how biodiversity can support, and be supported by, NbS design and implementation remains an under-studied component of the NbS concept despite its critical importance. Starting with a brief primer on the major roles that biodiversity plays in NbS performance, we present eight recommendations for enhancing biodiversity in NbS planning and implementation. This narrative expert synthesis draws from an interdisciplinary literature search and decades of experience across landscape ecology, environmental engineering, urban planning, wildlife management, ecological restoration, and conservation science. Recommendations emphasize the importance of considering the ecological mechanisms that support biodiversity (i.e., viable populations of coexisting species) and understanding the role of organismal life history, species interactions, habitat preferences, and metapopulation dynamics in determining NbS features' ecological resilience and contributions to biodiversity enhancement (i.e., IUCN Global Standard Criterion 3). We also emphasize the importance of assessing biodiversity across spatial scales and dimensions (e.g., functional, phylogenetic) and monitoring and ecological management for anticipating and adapting to unexpected outcomes, invasive species, and ecosystem dis-services. This review is intended to increase connections between ecological science, conservation biology, and NbS implementation to support more biodiverse projects with more robust, resilient, and multifunctional performance and greater contributions to global conservation.