About NbS
This guide covers the definition, key enablers and considerations related to Nature-based Solutions.
What are Nature-based solutions?
“Actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.” - IUCN
Nature-based Solutions are not projects with a clear-cut end-date and outcome. A specific environmental practice by itself is not per definition a Nature-based Solution. NbS operate as natural practices (often multiple) undertaken within long-term transitions, taking into account and empowering the structures which enable them (policy, governance, etc.) to reconnect local communities with their environments, and address the challenges they face.
For a comprehensive overview of Nature-based solutions, explore this ThinkNature Handbook for Nature-based solutions.
Developing Nature-based Solutions
The systemic nature of NbS makes them ambitious and challenging to navigate. The IUCN Global Standard helps practitioners address these complexities. The Standard encompasses eight core principles and 28 indicators which set a framework that supports the continuous design, implementation, and evaluation processes necessary to strengthen the effectiveness, sustainability, and adaptability of NbS interventions.
Access the IUCN NbS self assessment tool here: https://nbs-sat.iucn.org/ and the guidance document with extensive detail on the core principles as well as related criteria and core principles here: https://iucn.org/our-work/topic/iucn-global-standard-nature-based-solutions.
For more insight into lessons learned and success factors collected from NbS case studies, explore sources such as:
IIED - Nature-based solutions in action: lessons from the frontline
Core principles for successfully implementing and upscaling Nature-based Solutions (2019)
Planning nature-based solutions: Principles, steps, and insights
Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges.
Why Nature-based solutions?
NbS use healthy ecosystems as core infrastructure: protecting, managing and restoring forests, wetlands, coasts, soils and rivers so they tackle societal challenges (climate, floods, food, health) as well as strengthen biodiversity and livelihoods. By doing so, these healthy ecosystems provide crucial ecosystem services our society depends on.
1. NbS are essential: enabling climate, nature and socio-economic goals
NbS use healthy ecosystems as core infrastructure: protecting, managing and restoring forests, wetlands, coasts, soils and rivers so they tackle societal challenges (climate, floods, food, health) as well as strengthen biodiversity and livelihoods. By doing so, these healthy ecosystems provide crucial ecosystem services our society depends on.
- Land-based nature-based solutions are recognised as indispensable for global goals. Providing up to 37% of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed through 2030 for a >66% chance of keeping warming below 2°C. They are estimated to potentially reduce or sequester more than 500 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent from 2020 to 2050.
- More than 5.8 billion people depend on nature for their livelihoods and nature is inextricably linked to health through medicines, nutrition, mental health, air quality and other dimensions.
- NBS often positively impact climate change mitigation and adaptation, ecosystem health and biodiversity species richness - generating systemic environmental wins.A study reviewing 109 NbS interventions, showed 88% of interventions with reported positive outcomes for climate change adaptation also reported benefits for ecosystem health. Those interventions were associated with a 67% average increase in species richness. All eight studies which reported benefits for both climate change mitigation and adaptation also supported ecosystem health, leading to a “triple win.”
2. NbS are effective: delivering measurable climate, risk-reduction and biodiversity gains
- A global analysis of natural climate solutions finds a cost-effective potential of about 11.3 GtCO₂e per year by 2030, roughly one-third of the mitigation effort required in 2°C pathways.
- Global land-use scenarios indicate that ambitious restoration and protection of ecosystems could avoid about one-third of the terrestrial biodiversity loss otherwise projected by 2050. Local studies consistently find large gains in species richness and habitat quality when NbS are implemented well.
3. NbS make economic sense: investment protects value and creates new returns
- Around 55% of global GDP, about US$58 trillion, is moderately or highly dependent on nature; protecting and restoring ecosystems is fundamentally a risk-management and value-protection strategy for economies and portfolios
- Related to adaptation, mangroves alone prevent more than US$65 billion in flood damage each year and protect over 15 million people from coastal flooding, services that would be lost if current mangroves disappeared.
- The UN’s ecosystem restoration agenda shows that restoring 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 could generate around US$9 trillion in ecosystem services and remove 13–26 Gt of greenhouse gases – with economic benefits estimated at around 9–10 times the cost of investment.
- Current flows into NbS only equate to US$130–200 billion per year, leaving a trillion-dollar financing gap to 2050 – a gap that represents an opportunity for expanded climate-aligned, nature-positive investment.
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