Rethinking Nature-Based Solutions: Unintended Consequences, Ancient Wisdom, and the Limits of Nature

Abstract

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have emerged as an influential framework in climate and water governance, promoted as cost-effective, resilient, and ecologically sound responses to environmental degradation. This interdisciplinary review critically examines the conceptual foundations, governance models, and systemic risks associated with NbS in urban and coastal water management. While NbS are often presented as sustainable and multifunctional alternatives to grey infrastructure, the literature reveals recurring vulnerabilities—ranging from ecological side effects to socio-political inequities and epistemological overconfidence. Drawing on contemporary case studies and classical environmental thought—from authors such as Virgil, Lucretius, and Seneca—the paper challenges the prevailing assumption that nature-based interventions are inherently beneficial or resilient. Instead, it argues for a reflexive and context-sensitive approach to NbS, one that integrates historical awareness, ethical reflection, and adaptive governance. The review proposes a typology of systemic risks, synthesizes unintended consequences across global examples, and calls for greater integration of environmental humanities into NbS research and policy design.

1. Introduction

In recent years, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have emerged as an increasingly influential concept in environmental governance, promoted as a sustainable response to interconnected crises such as climate change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss [1,2]. Defined as actions that work with and enhance nature to address societal challenges, NbS are increasingly mainstreamed in urban planning, water management, and disaster risk reduction. The appeal of NbS lies in their ability to offer multiple co-benefits—ecological restoration, carbon sequestration, community engagement—while also serving as alternatives or complements to conventional infrastructure. International frameworks such as the EU Green Deal and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration have begun to promote the NbS paradigm as a promising, cost-effective, and inclusive strategy [3].

However, despite the growing institutional consensus around NbS, a growing body of critical literature has begun to interrogate the assumptions underpinning this narrative. Scholars have pointed to conceptual ambiguities within NbS definitions, inconsistencies in implementation, and the risk of depoliticizing ecological interventions [4,5]. In many cases, NbS are framed as win-win solutions that obscure power dynamics, institutional constraints, or socio-ecological trade-offs. This green positivism—the belief that ecological interventions are inherently good—can lead to governance models that prioritize aesthetics, market logic, or resilience discourse, while marginalizing social justice concerns, long-term ecological integrity, or community agency [6,7].

Recent studies have shown that NbS can exacerbate inequalities when used in climate adaptation or urban greening projects, especially when implemented in a top-down manner. Green infrastructure can lead to land grabbing, gentrification, or the displacement of vulnerable populations under the banner of sustainability [8,9]. Moreover, the long-term efficacy of NbS in the face of climate uncertainty is still under-researched, particularly with regard to maintenance costs, adaptive capacity, and the unintended consequences of engineered ecosystems. In this context, critical scholars have begun to question whether NbS constitute a genuinely transformative environmental strategy or whether they reproduce dominant managerial logics under a more palatable ecological guise [10,11].

This paper contributes to this debate by offering a critical, interdisciplinary review of the literature on NbS, with a specific focus on water-related applications in urban and coastal environments. It adopts a dual lens: on the one hand, it synthesizes the main critiques and risks associated with NbS as identified in recent academic research; on the other, it draws on classical and historical environmental thought to challenge and expand contemporary assumptions about nature, intervention, and governance. This historical perspective does not aim to romanticize past ecological practices, but rather to reframe current environmental strategies within longer-term philosophical traditions that emphasize uncertainty, relationality, and humility in human-nature relations.

The use of classical texts—from authors such as Hesiod, Virgil, Lucretius, Galen, and other early environmental thinkers—allows us to explore how ancient societies conceptualized ecological limits, risk, and temporality. These reflections, we argue, offer valuable critical tools to interrogate the modern tendency to frame nature as manageable, programmable, or resilient in predictable ways. In contrast to contemporary NbS discourse, which often assumes that ecosystems can be engineered to deliver services under future climate regimes, classical environmental thought was deeply attuned to contingency, divine unpredictability, and the limits of human control. We suggest that recovering these perspectives can help destabilize certain techno-managerial tendencies within NbS policy and practice.

The originality of this review lies in its dialogue between contemporary critiques and historical epistemologies. While many NbS reviews focus on typologies, effectiveness metrics, or co-benefit quantification, this paper takes a different route by emphasizing conceptual risks, socio-political consequences, and ontological assumptions. It argues that NbS are not just technical solutions, but also discursive and institutional artifacts shaped by particular worldviews—worldviews that deserve critical scrutiny.

To do so, we structure the paper in four main parts. First, we present our methodological approach, explaining the selection of academic and historical sources, and our rationale for adopting a critical-humanities framework. Second, we offer a thematic synthesis of recent literature, organized around four key areas of risk: (1) conceptual ambiguities and definitional inconsistencies; (2) socio-political risks, including governance failures and uneven distribution of benefits and burdens; (3) ecological and temporal trade-offs, particularly under climate uncertainty; and (4) issues of scale, scalability, and the commodification of nature. In the third part, we engage with selected classical texts, interpreting how ancient ideas of nature, risk, and order might help reframe or complicate modern assumptions embedded in NbS design and discourse. Finally, we conclude with a reflection on the need for a more historically aware and ethically grounded NbS agenda—one that embraces complexity, accepts limits, and fosters participatory, justice-oriented approaches.

By bringing together the contemporary literature and classical thought, this review seeks to unsettle linear, technocratic framings of nature-based interventions. It calls for an epistemological shift: from managing nature as service provider to engaging with nature as co-actor in a deeply contingent world.

2. Materials and Methods

This review adopts an interdisciplinary and interpretive methodology that integrates insights from environmental science, systems thinking, classical literature, and the environmental humanities. The goal is to critically examine the conceptual foundations, governance logics, and ecological consequences of NbS, particularly in urban and coastal water management contexts.

2.1. Research Design

The review follows a three-stage methodological structure:

• Framing: Identification of dominant narratives, conceptual tensions, and critical debates in NbS literature, with particular attention to socio-political and ecological risks.
• Historical-Conceptual Anchoring: Selection of classical sources from Greco-Roman thought (e.g., Hesiod, Lucretius, Virgil, Seneca) used as interpretive tools to interrogate modern environmental assumptions.
• Comparative Synthesis: Cross-analysis of contemporary case studies and critical literature to reveal systemic contradictions, governance challenges, and ontological framings of “nature” in NbS discourse.

This approach enables a critical dialogue between current environmental governance models and long-standing philosophical traditions, aiming to reframe NbS not as fixed solutions, but as culturally and politically contingent constructs.

2.2. Literature Selection and Scope

The selection of sources combined peer-reviewed scientific literature, policy reports, and classical texts. Figure 1 illustrates the logic of source inclusion and how each category contributes to the analytical structure of the paper.

We reviewed:

• Peer-reviewed articles (1995–2024), retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar using keywords such as “nature-based solutions”, “urban water resilience”, “coastal protection”, “NbS trade-offs”, and “green infrastructure risks”.
• Grey literature from institutions including the European Commission, UN Environment Programme, and IUCN, to capture the policy framing of NbS.
• Classical texts from authors such as Hesiod, Virgil, Lucretius, and Galen, used not as historical sources per se, but as epistemological lenses to critically assess dominant environmental rationalities.

These works were selected based on their thematic resonance with contemporary NbS debates—particularly regarding resilience, ecological uncertainty, and human–nature relations. Rather than providing empirical evidence, they are interpreted through a hermeneutic-comparative approach and treated as conceptual interlocutors that illuminate long-standing tensions between environmental control and adaptation. Their inclusion enables a deeper critique of the ontological and ethical assumptions that often underpin modern sustainability narratives.

Sources were included based on the following criteria:

• Relevance to NbS implementation in urban or coastal water contexts;
• Presence of unintended or contested outcomes;
• Engagement with governance, justice, or long-term ecological dynamics;
• Capacity to support conceptual or epistemological reflection.

The final selection comprised 67 sources, across four languages (English, Spanish, Italian, French). Classical texts were selected purposefully based on thematic resonance with contemporary debates (e.g., nature as order/disorder, uncertainty, limits of human control).

2.3. Visual Summary of Methodological Structure

Figure 1 provides a schematic overview of the literature selection process used in this review. It outlines the sequential stages of identification, screening, eligibility assessment, and final inclusion of peer-reviewed studies sourced from major academic databases. Additional records were identified through backward citation searches. While the diagram reflects the treatment of the scientific literature, classical sources and grey literature were selected through thematic, purposive screening based on their conceptual relevance and are therefore not represented in the flowchart.

3. Conceptual Framework for Critical Analysis of NbS

To guide the interpretive synthesis presented in this review, four key concepts are introduced. These concepts provide the critical scaffolding through which NbS are examined—not merely as technical instruments, but as socio-political and epistemological constructs embedded in specific governance paradigms. Each term is drawn from interdisciplinary scholarship across environmental sciences and environmental humanities.

3.1. Green Positivism

Green positivism refers to the widespread belief that nature-based or ecological interventions inherently produce beneficial outcomes [12]. While this perspective is rhetorically powerful, it often obscures the complex trade-offs, feedbacks, and power relations embedded in NbS implementation [13,14]. Unlike general ecological optimism, green positivism tends to reduce nature to a service-providing entity, erasing historical contingencies and systemic uncertainties [15]. Recognizing this bias is essential to avoid presenting NbS as inherently “good” rather than as complex, context-dependent socio-technical arrangements [16].

3.2. Reflexivity

Reflexivity denotes the institutional and epistemic capacity to critically assess underlying assumptions, monitor outcomes, and adapt strategies in light of emergent risks and uncertainties. In NbS governance, reflexivity is a core requirement for adaptive management, especially given the long-term and nonlinear nature of ecological processes [17,18]. Without reflexive mechanisms, NbS risk becoming static design solutions rather than iterative, participatory experiments [19].

3.3. Systemic Interactions

Systemic interactions refer to the interdependencies and feedback loops that link ecological, hydrological, social, and institutional systems. Effective NbS must be grounded in systems thinking to avoid addressing isolated symptoms rather than root causes. Failure to account for these interactions increases the risk of maladaptation, especially in dynamic urban or coastal contexts where interventions can have cascading and unintended effects [20,21,22].

3.4. Technocratic Fixes

Technocratic fixes critique the tendency to treat NbS as apolitical, efficiency-driven design problems [23]. When implemented through engineering-led or managerial frameworks, NbS may replicate the shortcomings of grey infrastructure, such as prioritizing quantifiable outputs over democratic deliberation or long-term resilience. If embedded in depoliticized governance models, nature-based strategies risk becoming tools of ecological control rather than catalysts for systemic transformation [24].

These four concepts are not just analytical categories but normative signposts: they help surface the ethical, political, and epistemological tensions that shape NbS discourse and practice. The following sections draw on this conceptual framework to assess contemporary NbS literature and reflect on how ancient environmental thinking may illuminate and complicate prevailing assumptions.

4. State of the Art: A Thematic Synthesis of Critical NbS Literature

4.1. Conceptual Ambiguity and Multifunctionality Expectations

A central concern emerging from the academic and institutional literature on NbS is the persistent ambiguity surrounding their definition [4,5]. While NbS are intended to promote sustainable development goals and multifunctionality, the concept frequently functions as a “boundary term”—flexible enough to unite disparate actors, but vague enough to obscure operational clarity. This definitional elasticity, though politically expedient, poses significant challenges for ecological assessment and policy implementation. As Raymond et al. highlight [9], the lack of a coherent framework for assessing trade-offs, synergies, and systemic risks has contributed to unrealistic expectations regarding the transformative capacity of NbS. Projects are often framed as simultaneously climate-resilient, biodiversity-enhancing, cost-effective, and socially inclusive—yet these aims can conflict in practice, especially when ecological and social systems are oversimplified [17,25].

4.2. Governance Failures and Equity Risks

Alongside definitional ambiguities, governance challenges represent a recurring theme in critical NbS literature. Despite their participatory rhetoric, many NbS initiatives are embedded within fragmented institutional architectures that limit coordination and adaptive management [26]. Case studies across Europe, Asia, and North America show that NbS are often implemented through top-down processes lacking mechanisms for long-term maintenance, inclusive decision-making, or integration of local knowledge systems [27,28]. Power asymmetries between state agencies, private actors, and marginalized communities frequently shape which interventions are prioritized and how benefits and burdens are distributed [29]. This raises concerns about environmental justice and democratic legitimacy [30]. Without participatory frameworks capable of navigating local contexts and competing values, NbS risk reinforcing the very forms of socio-ecological exclusion they are designed to mitigate [31,32].

4.3. Unintended Socio-Ecological Consequences

Although NbS are often presented as benign alternatives to grey infrastructure, empirical studies document a range of unintended ecological, hydrological, and social impacts. In water and coastal systems, these consequences often stem from the dynamic, nonlinear character of the environments in which NbS operate [33,34,35].

For example, coastal wetland restoration has in some cases disrupted sediment flows, leading to erosion in adjacent habitats [36,37]. Large-scale mangrove replanting has displaced seagrass meadows and altered tidal regimes, undermining habitat availability for migratory species [38,39]. Urban green infrastructure—designed for stormwater control—has triggered gentrification in some cities, contributing to the displacement of low-income residents [31,40]. Even NbS with climate mitigation goals, such as peatland rewetting or river reconnection, have produced trade-offs like increased methane emissions or flood risk shifts [41].

These outcomes echo classical concerns. In Georgics, Virgil portrays the farmer’s labor not as mastery over nature but as a negotiation with unpredictable forces—floods, disease, seasonal variability. His awareness of nature’s volatility resonates with contemporary experiences, where models that assume ecological predictability are often contradicted by feedback effects or emergent vulnerabilities [42,43].

Similarly, Seneca reminds us that rivers do not “obey” logic; they shift and move according to their own dynamic [44]. Modern hydrological NbS, such as re-meandering rivers or restoring floodplains, have sometimes failed to anticipate such fluid behaviors, producing unintended sedimentation patterns, groundwater disruptions, or saline intrusion. Table 1 summarizes selected case studies illustrating these systemic risks.

These dynamics are further illustrated by specific large-scale initiatives. In the Netherlands, the Room for the River program—designed to reduce flood risks through floodplain restoration and reconnection—faced unexpected resistance from local communities [45]. Farmers expressed concerns over sediment deposition patterns that altered land use viability, while others criticized the lack of early-stage consultation and compensation mechanisms. Despite its ecological ambition, the project’s implementation revealed tensions between hydraulic engineering rationalities and lived landscape practices [46]. In China, the Sponge City Initiative aimed to increase urban water retention by integrating permeable surfaces, wetlands, and green roofs into the urban fabric. However, its early rollout in cities like Wuhan and Shenzhen was hampered by maintenance challenges and infrastructural mismatches. Some districts reported that green installations failed under heavy rainfall due to poor integration with existing drainage networks, raising questions about the long-term functionality and adaptability of NbS under stress scenarios [47,48]. A similar tension emerged in the Mississippi River Delta, where sediment diversion projects were deployed to rebuild wetlands and buffer against hurricane-driven erosion. While ecologically motivated, these interventions altered salinity regimes in freshwater estuaries, affecting shrimp and oyster fisheries critical to local livelihoods and raising tensions among different stakeholder groups. As noted by Day et al. (2019), these trade-offs have generated both ecological and socio-political challenges, despite being proposed as part of a broader restoration vision [49,50]. In the Po River Delta in northern Italy, wetland restoration projects aimed at flood control have led to unexpected increases in methane emissions due to large-scale peatland rewetting. This trade-off challenges the climate mitigation narrative often associated with NbS, highlighting the need to balance carbon sequestration goals with other greenhouse gas dynamics [51].

In the United Kingdom, saltmarsh realignment projects have encountered strong community resistance, particularly where local populations were insufficiently consulted or compensated. These cases underscore the social dimensions of NbS and the risks of policy backlash when stakeholder engagement is lacking [52].

This case underscores how even well-intended NbS can redistribute ecological risk, particularly when implemented at scale without adaptive monitoring systems. These cases emphasize that unintended consequences are not merely implementation failures but reflections of deeper governance and design assumptions. They highlight the importance of integrating local knowledge, ensuring adaptive flexibility, and confronting the systemic complexity of socio-ecological interactions, rather than assuming that “working with nature” will automatically produce equitable and resilient outcomes [53].

It is worth noting that the case studies presented above represent different forms of risk and failure within the broader NbS framework. While the Sponge City and Mississippi River Delta examples highlight implementation failures related to inadequate planning, maintenance, or technical design, the cases of Room for the River in the Netherlands and saltmarsh realignment in the UK foreground more clearly the social and political trade-offs involved in NbS deployment. Grouping these cases under a single heading risk conflating distinct underlying dynamics—those stemming from technical shortcomings, and those rooted in stakeholder resistance, institutional trust, or distributive justice. We recognize this limitation and clarify here that these examples illustrate different dimensions of unintended consequences: not all arise from the same causal pathways. The typology that follows seeks to preserve this distinction by organizing risks along technical, ecological, social, temporal, and epistemological lines.

Table 1. Documented cases of unintended consequences in NbS implementation.

Location/Project	Type of NbS	Observed Issue	Primary Cause	Outcome/Consequence
Netherlands—Room for the River [45]	Floodplain restoration	Sediment altered farming patterns	Overestimated dispersion	Land-use conflict; habitat shifts
Bangladesh—Mangrove belts [38,39]	Mangrove replanting	Biodiversity loss; downstream erosion	Monoculture; tidal obstruction	Delta instability; ecosystem simplification
USA—Mississippi Delta [49,50]	River diversion	Altered salinity regimes affecting estuarine balance	Inflexible design	Fishery decline; estuarini habitat fragmentation
Italy—Po River Delta [51]	Wetland restoration	Elevated methane emissions	Peatland rewetting	GHG trade-off; carbon neutrality challenged
UK—Saltmarsh realignment [52]	Managed realignment	Community resistance	Inadequate compensation; poor consultation	Policy backlash; loss of stakeholder trust

Table 1. Documented cases of unintended consequences in NbS implementation.

Location/Project	Type of NbS	Observed Issue	Primary Cause	Outcome/Consequence
Netherlands—Room for the River [45]	Floodplain restoration	Sediment altered farming patterns	Overestimated dispersion	Land-use conflict; habitat shifts
Bangladesh—Mangrove belts [38,39]	Mangrove replanting	Biodiversity loss; downstream erosion	Monoculture; tidal obstruction	Delta instability; ecosystem simplification
USA—Mississippi Delta [49,50]	River diversion	Altered salinity regimes affecting estuarine balance	Inflexible design	Fishery decline; estuarini habitat fragmentation
Italy—Po River Delta [51]	Wetland restoration	Elevated methane emissions	Peatland rewetting	GHG trade-off; carbon neutrality challenged
UK—Saltmarsh realignment [52]	Managed realignment	Community resistance	Inadequate compensation; poor consultation	Policy backlash; loss of stakeholder trust

4.4. Lessons from History: Control, Vulnerability, and Humility

Modern NbS discourse often presents these interventions as forward-looking solutions that depart from the technocratic logics of the past. Yet a historical perspective reveals deep continuities. Ancient and early modern water infrastructures—from Roman aqueducts to Renaissance drainage schemes—were celebrated for their ingenuity but often reproduced ecological and social asymmetries [54,55]. These legacies remind us that control-oriented systems, even when ecologically inspired, are not immune to failure or exclusion. Classical thinkers, too, were deeply attuned to these tensions. In Naturales Quaestiones, Seneca warns against assuming that water systems can be domesticated: “rivers live”, he writes, “not according to our plans, but their own” [44]. This epistemological humility is crucial today, especially as NbS scale up under pressure to perform across multiple domains. If their complexity is not adequately appreciated—and if design is not flexible enough to adjust to emergent risks—NbS may repeat historical patterns of overconfidence and ecological simplification.

4.5. Summary: Risks of Technocratic Framing and the Need for Reflexivity

Across contexts, the critical literature reveals that NbS—while promising in principle—carry with them conceptual, political, ecological, and operational risks. These risks can be systematically categorized across five domains—technical, ecological, social, temporal, and epistemological—each associated with distinct failure modes and unintended consequences. Table 2 summarizes this typology, offering a conceptual synthesis to guide more reflexive and context-sensitive NbS design.

These are not exceptions but systemic features when NbS are framed through overly optimistic or technocratic lenses. Assumptions that they can “fix” problems created by grey infrastructure without producing new ones are empirically fragile and conceptually naïve. A reflexive, historically informed approach is therefore essential. NbS should be framed not as universal solutions, but as context-specific negotiations within complex socio-ecological systems. They require governance structures that are adaptive, participatory, and sensitive to uneven power relations, cultural imaginaries of nature, and long-term feedbacks. Only through such a lens can NbS fulfill their transformative promise.

While this section has emphasized systemic risks, failures, and epistemological tensions within NbS frameworks, it is equally important to acknowledge that many of the studies cited, including those by Cohen-Shacham et al. (2019) [8] and Kato-Huerta (2022) [30], do not merely identify limitations, but also offer constructive strategies to address them. Cohen-Shacham and colleagues outline enabling principles for inclusive, adaptive, and ecosystem-based implementation, while Kato-Huerta advances a justice-oriented evaluative framework that can help assess equity implications across planning and deployment. These contributions demonstrate that critical NbS literature is not only diagnostic but actively engaged in governance reform and institutional innovation.

Complementing these scholarly contributions, a growing body of practice also illustrates how NbS can be implemented in ways that balance ecological goals with social and institutional adaptability. A notable example is the Isar Plan in Munich, Germany, which combined river restoration with flood control, biodiversity enhancement, and extensive stakeholder consultation. The project re-naturalized sections of the Isar River while maintaining its hydraulic function, demonstrating how context-sensitive and participatory design can enhance both ecological integrity and community outcomes [56,57].

This review, while deliberately foregrounding cautionary perspectives, seeks to complement, not disregard, such solution-oriented approaches by situating them within a broader discussion of historical continuities, governance complexity, and the need for design reflexivity. A balanced reading acknowledges that risks and responses are interdependent, and that only by embracing this dynamic tension can NbS fulfill their full transformative potential.

Table 2. Typology of risks and unintended consequences in NBS synthesized from the literature.

	Type of Risk	Typical Manifestation	Example
Technical	Design/performance failure	Infrastructure underperforms or malfunctions	Wetland fails to reduce runoff due to poor sizing [55]
Ecological	Ecosystem imbalance/side-effects	Biodiversity loss, invasive species spread, GHG emissions	Methane increases in re-wetted peatlands [58]
Social	Displacement, inequity, or opposition	Land-use conflict, exclusion of stakeholders, community resistance	Farmers affected by altered water flows [59]
Temporal	Delayed or cumulative effects	Benefits or harms emerge long after project initiation	Sediment build-up over decades [60]
Epistemological	Misframing or overconfidence in knowledge	Assumptions that “nature knows best” or that models fully capture complexity	Overreliance on GIS-based NbS planning tools [59]

Table 2. Typology of risks and unintended consequences in NBS synthesized from the literature.

	Type of Risk	Typical Manifestation	Example
Technical	Design/performance failure	Infrastructure underperforms or malfunctions	Wetland fails to reduce runoff due to poor sizing [55]
Ecological	Ecosystem imbalance/side-effects	Biodiversity loss, invasive species spread, GHG emissions	Methane increases in re-wetted peatlands [58]
Social	Displacement, inequity, or opposition	Land-use conflict, exclusion of stakeholders, community resistance	Farmers affected by altered water flows [59]
Temporal	Delayed or cumulative effects	Benefits or harms emerge long after project initiation	Sediment build-up over decades [60]
Epistemological	Misframing or overconfidence in knowledge	Assumptions that “nature knows best” or that models fully capture complexity	Overreliance on GIS-based NbS planning tools [59]

5. Reframing Nature: Insights from Classical Environmental Thought

While much of the current debate on NbS focuses on innovation and resilience in the face of climate change, classical sources offer an alternative epistemology—one that does not frame nature as a predictable partner or a reservoir of ecosystem services, but as a dynamic, ambivalent, and morally complex force [60,61]. The classical texts discussed in this review—by authors such as Hesiod, Lucretius, Virgil, and Seneca—constitute what we refer to as Ancient Wisdom: not a body of fixed truths, but a set of philosophical insights into environmental uncertainty, ethical restraint, and the limits of human control [62]. This tradition provides a critical counterpoint to the managerial and instrumental logics often embedded in NbS discourse, helping to reframe sustainability as a historically contested and ethically charged endeavor. The environmental thought of antiquity, particularly in Greco-Roman traditions, offers critical insights into how humans have historically understood their relationship with nature—not as a linear process of progress or control, but as a cycle of negotiation, vulnerability, and respect for uncertainty.

In Georgics, Virgil presents agriculture as a continuous struggle against the unpredictability of the natural world. Far from idealizing nature, he portrays it as a space of both sustenance and threat—plagues, storms, barren seasons, and sudden floods are part of the rural experience. The farmer, in this view, is not a master of nature but a humble negotiator, constantly adjusting to forces beyond their control [42,43]. This sensibility contrasts sharply with contemporary NbS discourse, where nature is often rendered as a calculable, optimizable system capable of delivering co-benefits on demand.

Similarly, Lucretius in De Rerum Natura conceives of nature as a system of atoms and void, governed not by purpose but by contingency. Human interventions into this system are bound by ignorance and limits [63,64]. His materialist cosmology reminds us that uncertainty is not an exception to be managed, but a condition to be accepted—an idea particularly relevant for NbS, where unintended consequences frequently arise from overconfidence in ecological predictability.

Seneca, in his Naturales Quaestiones, warns explicitly against the illusion of control in the face of natural forces. His discussion of rivers and floods emphasizes their autonomy: water does not follow human laws or expectations [44]. This idea resonates strongly with contemporary hydrological interventions such as river restoration, where technical models often fail to capture the full complexity of sediment dynamics, flow regimes, and ecological feedbacks. The modern tendency to “design” with nature may inadvertently replicate the ancient error of assuming nature’s compliance.

Galen, as a physician and philosopher, provides yet another layer: the body (natural or social) must be observed with humility and without presumption [65]. His diagnostic model, based on attention to symptoms and imbalances, offers a counterpoint to NbS strategies that rely on standardized solutions or quantifiable metrics of success. In this light, adaptive management is not a modern innovation, but a revival of a much older practice of iterative, responsive stewardship.

These classical texts do not offer “solutions” in the modern sense. Rather, they provide a vocabulary and a philosophical posture that challenge instrumentalist approaches to nature. They foreground limits, moral ambivalence, and the need for ethical reflection in human-environment interactions. This perspective does not negate the value of NbS, but it cautions against their uncritical embrace as universally beneficial or politically neutral interventions [66,67].

By reading modern NbS discourse through the lens of classical environmental thought, we are reminded that the desire to restore or mimic nature is not new. What is new is the scale, institutionalization, and framing of this desire in the language of policy, finance, and infrastructure.

Classical insights invite us to ask different questions:

• What assumptions underlie our belief in nature’s functionality?
• Who defines what counts as “natural”?
• How do we acknowledge ecological limits without falling into fatalism?

In reframing NbS with these questions in mind, we advocate for a mode of environmental governance that is not only technically sound, but also historically aware, ethically grounded, and epistemologically humble.

6. Conclusions and Future Directions

6.1. Rethinking NbS: Lessons from Critical and Historical Analysis

NbS are widely framed as a paradigm shift—from controlling nature to working with it. Yet, this review has shown that beneath this optimistic rhetoric lie unresolved conceptual, ecological, and political tensions. By combining insights from environmental science, case-based evidence, and classical thought, the paper argues that NbS are not inherently transformative, nor universally beneficial. Instead, they often replicate the same structural limitations of traditional “grey” infrastructure, namely, overconfidence in technocratic control, exclusion of local knowledge, and failure to anticipate systemic feedbacks.

Historical and philosophical reflection, especially through the lens of classical texts by Hesiod, Lucretius, Virgil, and Seneca, reveals a longstanding awareness of nature’s ambivalence. These authors challenge the notion of a cooperative or stable nature, instead emphasizing uncertainty, limit, and the fragility of human intervention. Their relevance to contemporary NbS discourse is not antiquarian but epistemological: they help unsettle the “green positivism” that assumes nature’s functionality is predictable, manageable, and universally restorative.

6.2. Towards More Reflexive and Context-Sensitive NbS

The empirical literature reviewed here demonstrates that NbS—while promising—often generates unintended socio-ecological consequences, especially when applied at scale without attention to context. From sediment accumulation in the Netherlands’ Room for the River program to saltwater intrusion in the Mississippi Delta and maintenance failures in China’s Sponge Cities, these cases show that NbS can create new vulnerabilities while attempting to address old ones.

To avoid such pitfalls, NbS must be reframed as context-specific, co-produced, and adaptive practices, embedded within participatory governance structures and sustained by ongoing feedback and revision. Technical success is not enough: long-term legitimacy and resilience depend on social equity, epistemic humility, and institutional flexibility.

The Environmental Humanities can play a crucial role in this transformation. Far from being external to environmental practice, disciplines like history, ethics, philosophy, and cultural studies provide the conceptual scaffolding through which sustainability is interpreted and enacted. They compel us to ask: not only “does it work?” —but “for whom?”, “under what assumptions?”, and “at what cost?”.

6.3. Future Research and Policy Directions

To support more ethically grounded and resilient NbS strategies, future research should pursue the following directions:

• Quantitative assessments of unintended consequences across ecological, temporal, and spatial scales, especially in water and coastal contexts.
• Participatory ethnographies and co-design approaches to capture local perceptions, lived experiences, and knowledge systems, particularly from Indigenous and marginalized communities.
• Comparative historical analyses of past environmental interventions to understand how societies have imagined and managed nature over time—and with what outcomes.
• Integration of environmental humanities into NbS policy frameworks, ensuring that ecological imagination and ethical deliberation are institutionalized alongside scientific modeling and cost-benefit logic.

Moreover, while classical references enrich the conceptual depth of this review, their cultural specificity must be acknowledged. Expanding the philosophical lens to include Indigenous epistemologies and non-Western environmental traditions is a crucial step toward building a more inclusive and pluralistic foundation for NbS scholarship.

A truly resilient Nature-based Solution is not one that simply mimics nature or delivers measurable services. It is one that embraces complexity, engages communities, resists simplification, and learns continuously. As this review has shown, working with nature requires more than biomimicry—it requires historical awareness, cultural imagination, and political courage.