Nature offers powerful solutions to major global challenges
“Healthy ecosystems underpin healthy, resilient nations and communities, and we cannot achieve our Sustainable Development Goals without safeguarding nature” Achim Steiner, UNDP (2017)
Land-based conservation and restoration has the potential to provide over 30% of the cost-effective climate change mitigation needed between now and 2030
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Most nations agree that nature is a major ally in the fight against climate change but policy ambition must be matched by robust targets
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Natural coastal wetlands prevented $625M property damage during Hurricane Sandy in NE USA in 2012
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Loss of coral reefs would double damage from coastal flooding and triple destruction by storms
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Nature-based climate solutions must be grounded in sound biodiversity science
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Ecosystem and biodiversity scientists must work closely with policymakers to identify meaningful climate adaptation targets that benefit both people and ecosystems
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Nature-based Solutions to Global Challenges
Science • Policy • Practice

The Nature-based Solutions Initiative is an interdisciplinary programme of research, policy advice and education based at the University of Oxford. It brings together natural, physical and social scientists with economists, governance and finance experts from across the University and beyond. Its mission is to enhance understanding of the potential of Nature-based Solutions to address global challenges and increase their sustainable implementation worldwide.

01 Science

Explore our bibliography for the latest publications on NbS and locate scientific evidence for the effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions to climate change impacts using our Evidence Platform

02 Policy

Discover how the world’s nations are planning for the impacts of climate change and learn how to increase climate ambition through Nature-based Solutions

03 Practice

Find out more about our in-country programmes and read about Nature-based Solutions in action from across the globe

Check out our NbS Platforms

Evidence platform

Our evidence platform is an interactive map linking nature-based solutions to climate change adaptation outcomes based on a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature.

Evidence platform

Policy platform

This platform makes information about climate change adaptation planning across the globe openly available, easy to explore. It highlights the prominence of NbS to climate change impacts in global policy

Policy platform

Latest publications on Nature-based Solutions

There are currently 384 publications in our bibliography.

Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges

There is growing awareness that ‘nature-based solutions’ (NbS) can help to protect us from climate change impacts while slowing further warming, supporting biodiversity and securing ecosystem services. However, the potential of NbS to [...] Read more
Seddon, N. et al. | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | 2020

Harnessing employment-based social assistance programmes to scale up nature-based climate action

As the severity of the triple challenges of global inequality, climate change and biodiversity loss becomes clearer, governments and international development institutions must find effective policy instruments to respond. We examine the potential [...] Read more
Norton, A. et al. | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | 2020

National mitigation potential from natural climate solutions in the tropics

Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional [...] Read more
Griscom, B. et al. | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | 2020

Bibliography

Latest annoucements

Read all our recent NbSI news and checkout our latest tweets on our news page.

Our letter to the new UNFCCC CoP26 president

Together with a group of UK-based research, development and conservation organisations, we wrote a letter to the new CoP26 President, the Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP, to ask him to consider some [...] Read more February 13, 2020
NbSI in the German Bundestag

We were invited by Green MP Steffi Lemke to share our understanding about Nature-based Solutions with a wide-ranging group of politicians, practitioners and scientists in the German Bundestag. This was part of [...] Read more February 10, 2020
Radio 5 live: Pros and cons of tree-planting

On late-night radio, Nat Seddon discusses the importance of planting trees carefully and for the right reasons, and of ensuring other vital ecosystems, such as grasslands and peatlands in the UK, are [...] Read more January 29, 2020
Bloomberg: Planting trees isn’t a simple solution to climate change

After the launch last week of the World Economic Forum’s Trillion Trees Platform, Nat Seddon talks to Bloomberg about the importance of planting the right species in the right places, and [...] Read more January 28, 2020