Resilience Community Forum: Building with nature – how biodiversity net gain is reshaping infrastructure design

Fiona Barbour

Fiona Barbour has been working for more than two decades to reduce the impact of climate change through flood risk management, mostly at Mott MacDonald, which she joined in 2011. She is currently supporting the development of Anglian Water’s new reservoir programme.

An ICE Fellow, Barbour has been active in the institution – including chairing its Edinburgh Area Branch – since graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 2002. She became chair of its Flooding Community Advisory Board in 2020 and now co-leads the Resilience Community Forum, representing the ICE at conferences and in interviews with the media, including BBC Radio 4’s PM programme. She is a member of the ICE’s Learning Society Committee and has recently been appointed Scottish regional representative for the ICE Council.

Dr Julia Baker

In her current role, Julia Baker is responsible for integrating nature into Mott MacDonald’s infrastructure planning and delivery. She also helps clients to develop and implement policies to support the Nature Positive Initiative’s goal of reversing global biodiversity loss. 

With a PhD in biodiversity management and more than two decades’ experience in the field, Baker was the principal author of Biodiversity Net Gain: Good practice principles for development in 2016. She led training on this subject for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) and contributed to the statutory biodiversity metric for England.  

Baker was named CIEEM Member of the Year in 2023 and has featured several times on Environmental News and Data Services’ Power List of influential environmental professionals. 

Bekki Parrish

With a PhD on the impacts of climate change from Brunel University, Bekki Parish is a specialist in improving the built environment’s resilience to climate risks.  

Since joining Mott MacDonald in 2020, she has focused on integrating natural systems into infrastructure to address hazards such as flooding and overheating, while ensuring the long-term adaptability of those ecosystems to future climate change. 

Jasmine Toy

Since joining Mott MacDonald in 2021, Jasmine Toy has specialised in ensuring that nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) deliver BNG and wider environmental benefits.  

In 2025, Toy wrote an article in the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals’ Outlook Journal on the need for strategic planning and scenario modelling to implement BNG effectively on NSIPs. She also contributed to Resilient by Nature, a guidance document published by the CIEEM.