My research is located within existing scholarship on environmental management practices' displacing and dispossessing effects on informal settlement residents in the Global South. In my project, I ask and examine how the emerging practice and concept of nature-based solutions can guide the equitable and just governance of the Cooum river restoration project in Chennai, India. Using a preliminary framework to operationalize the IUCN Global Nature-based Solutions' governance principles, I evaluate the Cooum restoration project across five broad indicators.