The Environmental Industries Commission (EIC), part of FIDIC member association the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE Group), has launched a new roadmap calling for nature-based solutions to be given the same policy standing as traditional infrastructure such as roads, railways and flood defences.

The plan, Delivering Nature Infrastructure: A Three-Point Plan, sets out three priorities: recognising nature as infrastructure in its own right, improving coordination across government to deliver it, and building a stronger evidence base for its economic value.

Milda Manomaityte, CEO of ACE Group, said the sector has always known that the best solutions work with nature, not against it, and argued that what is now needed is the policy frameworks, investment signals and government coordination to reflect nature's true value. She pointed to the many services nature already provides UK communities, from absorbing flood water and cooling urban areas to protecting coastlines and storing carbon, noting that the systems needed to measure, coordinate and value these contributions remain underdeveloped.

Philippa Spence, Managing Director for Environment and Health at Ramboll and an official partner on the initiative, welcomed the plan as a practical and deliverable starting point for embedding nature-based infrastructure properly into government planning and decision-making.

According to ACE, nature-based solutions already deliver climate resilience, biodiversity gain, carbon sequestration and improved public health, often at a lower whole-life cost than engineered alternatives, yet remain outside mainstream infrastructure planning due to a lack of valuation frameworks, cross-government coordination and delivery structures. With the UK's National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority now operational, ACE argues the moment is right to establish nature as a cost-effective delivery mechanism in its own right, not simply a green add-on.

FIDIC congratulates ACE Group and the Environmental Industries Commission on this initiative, which reflects the kind of forward-looking, evidence-based advocacy that FIDIC's member associations bring to infrastructure policy around the world.

Read the full ACE press release and three-point plan here: https://www.acenet.co.uk/news/press-release/ace-group-launch-three-point-plan-to-put-nature-at-the-heart-of-uk-infrastructure/