Ports sit at the frontline of climate change, biodiversity loss, and growing regulatory and community expectations. As critical gateways for global trade, they must balance operational needs with environmental stewardship and long-term resilience. 

Nature-based solutions offer a practical way to achieve this balance. By working with natural processes, ports can strengthen coastal resilience, enhance biodiversity, improve water quality, reduce operating costs, and build trust with surrounding communities.

These approaches were explored in the ninth session of the Green Ports Webinar Series, which focused on nature-based solutions for ports and coastal conservation. From autonomous marine restoration technologies and large-scale wetland creation to upstream catchment rehabilitation, the session showcased practical approaches already being applied in different port and coastal environments.

A key message from the discussion was that nature-based solutions can deliver much more than environmental mitigation. When considered early in planning and design, they can support operational objectives, strengthen climate resilience, help manage regulatory requirements, and unlock multiple co-benefits for ports and the areas they serve. 

Using Robotics to Scale Marine Restoration

The session explored how autonomous robotics can support marine restoration and monitoring. Nate L’Esperance, marine biologist at Ulysses Maritime Technologies, shared how autonomous underwater vehicles can map, monitor, collect, and plant seagrass at greater scale. Ulysses has applied these technologies in restoration work in Australia and the United States.

L’Esperance also emphasized affordability as an important challenge in scaling marine restoration. Automation has the potential to lower costs while enabling more frequent monitoring and improving safety.

Beyond restoration, these technologies can support a range of applications relevant to ports and coastal managers, including habitat mapping, coastal change detection, infrastructure inspections, fisheries assessments, and environmental data for permitting and reporting. 

Turning Dredged Material into an Environmental Asset

The Alabama Port Authority provided a compelling example of how an operational challenge can become an opportunity for large-scale habitat creation. 

Environmental Director Gretchen Barrera presented the Upper Mobile Bay Wetland Creation Project, which will use dredged material to create approximately 1,200 acres of new wetland habitat while providing long-term capacity for maintenance dredging.

The project responds to two challenges. Dredged material handling had become the port’s largest annual operating expense, while existing disposal options were increasingly constrained. At the same time, the region had experienced significant wetland loss due to rising sea levels, subsidence, coastal development, and shoreline hardening. 

Rather than treating dredged sediment solely as waste material to be disposed of, the project will return it to the coastal system to create new wetland habitat. The project is expected to reduce operating costs for the port, provide additional dredged material placement capacity, reduce its carbon footprint, and reintroduce Mobile Bay sediments into the natural system while delivering substantial habitat benefits. 

The project also highlights what it can take to bring a major nature-based solution to implementation. Planning, investigations, modelling, design, permitting, and stakeholder engagement have taken nearly 15 years to bring the project close to construction. Extensive technical work has been required to assess issues including sediment quality, cultural resources, existing habitats, site conditions, and permitting requirements. Once completed, the project is expected to provide around 20 years of additional dredged material capacity.

The experience illustrates an important lesson: nature-based solutions can address environmental and operational challenges together, but major projects require sustained effort and collaboration to move from concept to implementation.

Looking Beyond Port Boundaries

Greg Fisk, Senior Advisor at the Port of Brisbane, demonstrated that effective nature-based solutions may sometimes occur outside a port’s immediate footprint. 

The Port of Brisbane’s nature-based initiatives range from saltmarsh and mangrove rehabilitation to oyster habitat restoration and upstream catchment rehabilitation. 

Some have involved relatively simple interventions. At one site, restricting vehicle access, rehabilitating the foreshore, and improving water flows helped restore a degraded saltmarsh ecosystem. At another, restoring the natural hydrology of a creek system increased the diversity and abundance of species observed.

One of the port’s most striking initiatives extends far beyond the waterfront. Much of the sediment reaching the Brisbane River originates from erosion across the wider catchment. The port has therefore invested with partners in streambank rehabilitation more than 100 kilometers upstream. 

By addressing erosion at its source, the project helps keep soil on farms, prevent sediment from entering waterways, and ultimately reduce the amount of maintenance dredging material the port must manage each year.

The port also works with partners to extend what it can achieve. Through its work with OzFish, for example, the port provides space for oyster habitat restoration using discarded oyster shells. As oysters establish, they can provide habitat for fish, improve water quality through filter feeding, and reuse material that might otherwise go to landfill. 

Together, these initiatives demonstrate the importance of thinking beyond port boundaries. The source of an operational or environmental challenge may lie far beyond the waterfront, and addressing it can require working across ecosystems and with partners that understand the local context.

The Future of Green Ports

A recurring theme throughout the webinar was that nature-based solutions should not be viewed as environmental add-ons. Instead, they are increasingly becoming part of mainstream port planning, design, and operation.

At the Port of Brisbane, this shift is reflected in a recently completed concept for a Living Ports Master Plan, which considers how different habitats and interventions could be developed progressively over the next 50 years.

The examples presented demonstrated that ports can achieve strong environmental outcomes while supporting operational objectives and reducing costs. The challenge now is scaling these approaches across Southeast Asia and beyond, helping ports build more resilience while strengthening the ecosystems and communities they depend on.