The Potential for Nature-Based Solutions Initiatives to Incorporate and Scale Climate Adaptation
Explore the barriers nature-based solutions initiatives face in offering enhanced adaptation support and consider their potential to better incorporate climate adaptation.
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The term “nature-based solutions (NBSs)” captures approaches to reverse natural resource degradation and biodiversity loss while promoting sustainable development. Across ecosystems, many NBSs can also protect people and nature from climate impacts, including shorter-term hazards like flooding and longer-term threats like desertification.
Reducing these risks is paramount, especially since they disproportionately affect vulnerable and marginalized groups (such as women, Indigenous Peoples, the elderly, people living in poverty and those with disabilities) who are directly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods and/or are physically exposed to climate impacts. These groups stand to benefit the most from nature-based climate adaptation solutions, revealing an important opportunity to advance equity outcomes. Additionally, evidence continues to emerge showing that an NBS approach can be more effective and result in greater savings, social benefits and avoided losses than business-as-usual interventions.
The Link between Ecosystems and Resilience
The links between ecosystems and societal resilience are clear. When ecosystems degrade, communities become more vulnerable to climate risks and lose vital resources provided by nature. NBS approaches can protect livelihoods and human well-being, and help societies better adapt to the changing climate.
This paper seeks to understand the potential for existing NBS-centered initiatives to better incorporate climate adaptation, thereby contributing to broader adaptation efforts needed to combat the climate emergency. It explores the barriers these initiatives face to offering enhanced adaptation support, as well as existing and new opportunities for accelerating adaptation actions, while improving monitoring and evaluation and capturing lessons learned.
Findings are based on an extensive literature review, a survey of the secretariat staffs of 16 initiatives, and follow-up interviews. Examples from three countries and one city illustrate the specific supporting roles that NBS initiatives can play in accelerating NBS for adaptation. The target audiences for this paper are managers and coordinators of NBS initiatives interested in increasing their climate adaptation impact, as well as funders of NBS initiatives, including bilateral and multilateral donors. The authors also hope that the findings and recommendations in this paper are useful to adaptation practitioners and other funders in the conservation, adaptation and sustainable development spaces, as well as city and national governments exploring nature-based measures to increase their climate resilience to mounting climate change impacts.