The River Contract As An Infrastructure Of Care For Nature-Based Solutions: From Negotiated Planning To Adaptive Basin Management

Abstract The River Contract can be interpreted as one of the most promising instruments for making Nature-based Solutions operational in riverine territories, provided that its nature is not confused with that of the material interventions it may promote. A wetland, a riparian buffer, a phytoremediation system, a rain garden, a drainage trench or a natural flood storage area can be considered Nature-based Solutions in a physical, ecological and design sense; the River Contract operates on a different plane, because it builds the institutional, organisational and social conditions through which such solutions can be selected, designed, financed, implemented, cared for, monitored and adapted over time. Read in this way, the River Contract takes on the profile of an infrastructure of governance, implementation and care. Its function is not exhausted by participation, nor by the production of an Action Programme, but concerns the capacity to organise a stable system of relations among public and private actors, operational responsibilities, economic resources, administrative instruments, procurement procedures, data, monitoring, learning and management continuity across the basin. Its value emerges especially when Nature-based Solutions are not considered isolated interventions, but components of a broader territorial strategy aimed at ecological regeneration, risk reduction, climate adaptation and quality of life for local communities. The European and international technical and methodological framework confirms the relevance of this reading. The European standard EN 18140, adopted as UNI EN 18140:2026, contributes to defining terminology and classification for Nature-based Solutions; the ISO/UNI ISO 3710X series and, more broadly, the ISO 371XX corpus introduce references on management systems, descriptive frameworks, smart infrastructures, indicators and methodological approaches for sustainable cities and communities; the CEN Workshop Agreement on nature-based insurance and investment solutions highlights the need to demonstrate measurable risk reduction and financial sustainability across the life cycle; the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions provides criteria for assessing ecological quality, inclusive governance, adaptive management and institutional integration; the 2025 OECD paper on integrating NbS into River Basin Management Plans directly links nature-based solutions to basin planning; the UNaLab handbook emphasises the life cycle of NbS, from co-creation to co-monitoring; the 2024 WRI framework provides tools for selecting solutions in relation to water, heat and ecological risks; and the 2022 EIP-AGRI report introduces the role of NbS in agricultural water management and small rural basins [1], [2], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. In Italy, Legislative Decree No. 152 of 3 April 2006, and in particular Article 68-bis, recognised River Contracts as voluntary instruments of strategic and negotiated planning that contribute to the definition and implementation of district planning instruments at basin and sub-basin scale. In Italy, Ministerial Decree No. 190/2025 updated the National Observatory of River Contracts at the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, strengthening national coordination, the harmonisation of processes and the use of the National River Contracts Platform as an operational tool for data collection, archiving and processing [12]. The thesis advanced in this article is that the River Contract should not be understood as an ancillary participatory procedure, nor as an administrative container for environmental interventions, but as an operational platform through which Nature-based Solutions can become part of a stable policy of basin care. This reading makes it possible to move beyond the logic of the punctual project, often fragile and fragmented, and instead to build a coordinated system of actions, responsibilities, monitoring and learning capable of acting simultaneously on water, soil, biodiversity, landscape, local economies and communities.