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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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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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.
Together with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, we ran an NBS workshop in Dhaka for practitioners and policymakers. Bangladesh has long-been implementing NBS. We discussed how this knowledge can best inform development policy and practice regionally and across globe.
On the basis of an analysis of comparative assessments of nature’s prominence in NDCs to date, our new report with IUCN highlights what can be done to fully harness the potential of NbS in global climate action. National commitments to NBS are also available via our NBS Policy Platform.
During UN Climate Action week, we launched our interactive evidence platform linking nature-based interventions to adaptation outcomes. The platform will grow as studies are added. Please check it out and let us know what you think.
We are excited to announce that we will host a major international interdisciplinary conference on Nature-based Solutions in Oxford in July 2020. For more information and to register interest, visit the conference website
NBSI director spoke with Carbon Brief at the Oxford Achieving Net Zero conference. She emphasised the need to balance Nature-based Solutions with tech to achieve net-zero, emphasising the vital importance of locally stewarded ecosystem restoration (and not afforestation!)
Our new paper reveals global support for Nature-based Solutions to climate change but highlights the need for high-level pledges to be met by science-based targets that benefit both people and ecosystems.
NBSI Director talks about the crucial role of biodiversity as a major ally in the fight against climate change and poverty in a video as part of Apolitical’s field guide for public servants: Policy Solutions from Nature.
Climate change and species loss are accelerating and natural disasters are becoming more frequent. Ecosystems are collapsing and agricultural land is being lost to desert. And millions of people face food or water shortages and are fleeing their homelands as conflict over dwindling natural resources intensifies.
Leaders and scientists across the globe are starting to realise that we must work with nature to solve these related global challenges. Nature not only helps protect us from climate change impacts but stores carbon to slow warming and supports biodiversity.
Enthusiasm for nature’s role in sustainable development is at an all-time high and growing rapidly. Yet scientific evidence for the effectiveness of NbS is scattered or poor, finance flows severely limited, and governance challenges immense. To address these issues we have established this Initiative.
Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and ...
Darling, E. et al., 2019We currently face both an extinction and a biome crisis embedded in a changing climate. Many biodiverse ecosystems are being ...
Temperton, V. et al. , 2019Land-based greenhouse gas removal (GGR) options include afforestation or reforestation (AR), wetland restoration, soil carbon sequestration (SCS), biochar, terrestrial enhanced ...
Smith, P. et al. , 2019 353 Studies
