12
Chapter1
The members of
the NWRM family
are very diverse in their types and in the
land use they can be applied to.You will find many examples of NWRM in the
accompanyingNWRM toolbox that can:
ņ
ņ
Modify ecosystems directly or indirectly
(via changes in soil and water
management practices);
ņ
ņ
Be
sector-specific
(agriculture, for example) or
applicable for different
sectors and (rural and urban) environments
. Overall, NWRM are in
theory relevant to any land use and sector, if applied appropriately.
NWRMarenot newmeasures
,as somehave longbeen implemented indifferent
countries and sectors.You have probably already heard of, or even usedNWRM
under other names and specialists’ jargon – have a look at some examples in
Box 2!What is new, however, is the recognition of their
multiple benefits
giving
opportunities for their application in policy areas other than the one(s) under
which they have been developed and are traditionally implemented.
As you will realise when reading this guide and exploring different experiences
of NWRM, individual NWRM are rarely implemented in isolation: they are
primarily
implemented in combinationwith otherNWRM and oftenwith grey
infrastructures
.The challenge is to find the right combination of measures that
responds to the characteristics and management issues of your catchment or
planning process.
Themanyaliasesofmembersof theNWRM family
ManyNWRMmeasures are not new, and are already being implemented – includingmaybe
by you. Theymight sometimes be new towater specialists as newcomers to a domainwhere
inspiration came first from pioneers of urban and rural planning, nature conservation and
climate change adaptation. You might have heard of terms such as: green infrastructures;
ecosystemornature-basedapproaches; soil-basedpractices; soil conservationpractices; giving
‘room to the river’ or ‘making space for water’; wetland restoration; Sustainable or Natural
Flood Management; Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS); bioengineering practices; water
harvesting; RunoffAttenuationFeatures (RAFs) … andprobablymanymore. These terms are
not synonymousbut they refer to somemembersand featuresof thewiderNWRM family.
Box2
