Launch of LRF Foresight Review on Nature Positive Engineering

IROE Chair and SMMI Deputy Director Professor Susan Gourvenec, and SMMI SIG Champion Dr Hachem Kasem acted as Technical Advisors for the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Foresight Review on Nature Positive Engineering.

The review explores Nature-Positive Engineering across offshore renewables, ports and coastal protection, offering insights to guide safe, scalable adoption and action.

The review identifies ten guiding principles to support NPE implementation:

1. Foster a mutually enhancing Human-Nature relationship
2. Take a whole lifecycle approach to ecological impacts
3. Deliver measurable nature improvements
4. Recognise interconnectedness across scales and timeframes
5. Co-develop solutions with communities and Indigenous Peoples
6. Design multifunctional, regenerative systems
7. Manage complex risks and trade-offs
8. Address the climate-nature-health nexus through adaptive management
9. Foster interdisciplinary collaboration
10. Anticipate and manage potential unintended consequences

Three key recommendations are made to accelerate the implementation of NPE to help protect, restore and enhance our natural ecosystems:

1. Create an enabling environment, including policies that leverage technology for integrated planning, embed biodiversity outcomes in permitting and procurement, and align finance with natural capital risk frameworks.
2. Building technical capacity through guidance to implement NPE across the lifecycle, a toolkit to design for interconnected climate-nature-health risks, standardised biodiversity metrics, case study research, and integrating NPE into education and professional development.
3. Advocacy and partnerships, establishing a global engineering NPE alliance and community of practice for knowledge sharing and policy influence, alongside targeted communications to policymakers, investors, and communities showcasing examples of successful NPE implementation.

You can download the report here