World Bank catalogs nature-based coastal defenses as climate pressure mounts

The World Bank has assembled a practical guide to using natural systems—mangroves, wetlands, coral reefs, dunes—as infrastructure to protect coastal communities from storms, flooding, and erosion. This means governments and development banks now have a tested menu of what actually works, how much it costs, and where to deploy it instead of guessing or defaulting to concrete seawalls.

For decades, coastal defense meant building barriers: seawalls, dikes, levees. Those are expensive, inflexible, and often fail when storms exceed design specifications. Natural systems do something different—they absorb and dissipate energy rather than resist it, they improve over time instead of degrading, and they generate side benefits like fisheries and carbon storage. This catalogue matters because it makes the economic case concrete. A development bank or government can now see: mangrove restoration costs X, protects Y kilometers, creates Z jobs, and generates these secondary benefits. That transforms 'nature-based solutions' from environmental rhetoric into a budget line item that competes directly with concrete.