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The global rise of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) presents a key opportunity to find synergies between social and environmental objectives of urban development and to address perceived conflicts between development, biodiversity, and human wellbeing. Yet, such integrated approaches in development are still rare; solutions typically focus on a set of design and measurement objectives constrained within disciplinary boundaries. The interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and coordination of outcomes between Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD), biodiversity and climate objectives remain limited. In focus-group workshops with ecology, hydrology, architecture and urban planning experts, we identified an opportunity to combine water and biodiversity planning - two critical components of nature-based solutions - for better social-ecological outcomes. Focus-groups also identified key obstacles currently limiting mutualistic biodiversity-water outcomes, such as considering biodiversity late as an ‘add-on’, offsetting, disciplinary siloing, a lack of integrated tools, guidelines and legislative policies, disruptions to flows across scale, among others. Here, we propose an approach to facilitate the collaborative integration of design for water and biodiversity that should commence at the early planning stages of development. This approach includes a novel framework, Nature-Water Design, that integrates WSUD with Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design (BSUD) using 5 key principles to guide decision-making towards achieving synergistic benefits for biodiversity, water and people. These 5 principles design for biodiversity and water, facilitating: 1) Resources, 2) Connectivity, 3) Processes and resource optimisation, 4) Human-Nature Stewardship, and 5) Threat mitigation.