Presentation short abstract

Urban NbS are often evaluated through anthropocentric, valuation-driven metrics that obscure ecological losses and reinforce uneven ecological exchange. Drawing on Scottish cases, this study proposes an eco-centric assessment framework to foreground ecosystem integrity and multispecies justice.

Presentation long abstract

Nature-based Solutions are widely promoted in European cities as win–win interventions for climate resilience, liveability and economic competitiveness. Yet dominant assessment approaches remain anchored in anthropocentric logics and natural-capital accounting, privileging human benefits and financial returns over ecological integrity. This study argues that such metric regimes actively contribute to uneven ecological exchange, rendering biosphere degradation, non-human losses and long-term ecosystem risks invisible within urban decision-making.Existing NbS evaluation tools largely emphasis efficiency, performance and monetary valuation, tracking co-benefits such as health, amenity or avoided damage, while their ability to reshape planning toward ecocentric priorities remains limited. Although impact handbooks and standards promote quality and replicability, even newer frameworks struggle to support integrated ecological assessment or to move beyond human-centered ecosystem-services models. Empirical research with NbS practitioners and policymakers in Scottish cities (29 interviews) shows how these limitations materialist in practice: high-profile projects are predominantly framed around flood protection, property and infrastructure security, land-value uplift and recreation, with biodiversity and ecosystem health treated as secondary co-benefits.Only a small subset of initiatives takes an explicitly eco-centric stance, placing species, habitats and ecological connectivity at the center, while “monetizing nature” discourses simultaneously enable funding and narrow NbS to market logic. In response, this study proposes an ecocentric NbS assessment framework that reorients existing tools toward whole-ecosystem challenges, prioritizing indicators such as species diversity, ecological connectivity and robust impact design. By treating ecosystems as intrinsic beneficiaries rather than infrastructures for human gain, this framework makes visible the uneven ecological exchanges underpinning ostensibly “nature-positive” urban projects.