Joint Special Issue of Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures and Cambridge Prisms: Water

Call for Papers

System Impacts of Nature Based Solutions for Coastal and Water Management

Nature Based Solutions (NbS) rely on natural processes or natural systems to address various challenges in both coastal protection and aspects of water management such as pollution control and flood risk mitigation. The joint special issue calls for papers to address some significant knowledge gaps in the use of NbS relating to potential trade-offs, system wide impacts and unintended consequences they may create. Problems can arise where multiple outcomes are generated in ways which, for example, might improve the physical environment for coastal defence at the expense of biodiversity if solutions are chosen/optimised for a single purpose. Similarly strategies for natural coastal protection might not be good for wider water management and “blue-green” approaches to urban flood control may not always align with a changing climate. System interactions and impacts for hard infrastructure are increasingly considered and this special issue will explore how NbS approaches for both coastal and water management may also generate unwanted (or perhaps synergistic) effects, which in some contexts and circumstances may challenge the notion that if “nature” is involved the results  must always be good. Papers are likely to address these concerns over a number of discipline boundaries reflecting views from ecology, conservation, hydrology, engineering and the natural sciences. And we would particularly welcome submissions that address issues across the terrestrial – coastal divide.

Submission deadline: 8th September 2025

Cambridge Prisms: Water Guest Editor Team:

Lead Guest Editors:

Professor Richard Fenner, University of Cambridge, UK; Co Editor-in-Chief Cambridge Prisms: Water

Professor Dragan Savic, KWR Water Research Institute, The Netherlands; Co Editor-in-Chief Cambridge Prisms: Water

Guest Editors:

Val Kapos, Cambridge Conservation / Principal Specialist in the Nature-based Solutions team at UNEP-WCMC, UK

Ellis Penning, Deltares, The Netherlands 

Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures Guest Editor Team:

Lead Guest Editors:

Professor Tom Spencer, University of Cambridge, UK; Editor-in-Chief Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures 

Guest Editors:

Simon Jude, Cranfield University, UK

Janine Adams, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa

This special issue is a collaboration between Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures and Cambridge Prisms: Water. Authors are free to choose the journal to submit their content to. While post-publication content may be organized into a combined collection, each submission will be formally published exclusively within the chosen journal. Joint publication contracts will not be available.