Evidence on the effectiveness of climate change adaptation interventions in low- and middle-income countries has been rapidly growing in recent years, particularly in the agricultural and coastal sectors. Here we address the question of whether results are consistent across intervention types, and risk reduction versus development-related outcomes using a systematic review of 363 empirical observations published in the scientific literature. Generally, we found more evidence of risk reduction outcomes in the coastal sector than in the agricultural sector, and more evidence of development-related outcomes in the agricultural sector. Further, results indicate that nature-based solutions have the strongest positive effects for both the coastal and agricultural sectors. Social/behavioural interventions in the coastal sector show negative effects on development-related outcomes that will need to be further tested. Taken together, our results highlight the opportunity for development and climate adaptation practitioners to promote adaptation interventions with co-benefits beyond risk reduction, particularly in the case of nature-based solutions.
NbS Target: Food & Water Security
Food and water security
Nature-based solutions (NbS) involve working with nature to address societal challenges in ways that benefit communities and biodiversity locally. However, their role supporting economic recovery from crises, such as those arising from conflicts or pandemics remains underexplored. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic review of 66 reviews on the economic impact of nature-based interventions. Most demonstrated positive outcomes for income and employment, though those with critical appraisal of underlying studies reported more mixed outcomes. These varied results were influenced by factors such as the balance between short-term and long-term gains, market conditions, regional effects, reliance on subsidies, and discrepancies between expected and actual economic benefits. National-scale economic growth assessments were scarce. Half of the cases featured nature-based food production investments, with much evidence from sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific. The few reviews comparing NbS with alternatives found that NbS delivered equal or better economic outcomes. NbS also provided broader benefits like food and water security, flood protection and community empowerment. We identified key factors influencing the delivery of benefits and trade-offs, finding that NbS must adhere to best practice standards, with community involvement being critical for equitable outcomes. Well-designed NbS can create diverse job opportunities at different skill levels, diversify income, and improve resilience, offering a rapid, flexible response to economic shocks that can be targeted at deprived communities. By integrating traditional, local and scientific knowledge, NbS can enable eco-innovation, and drive the transition to a clean and efficient circular economy, with high economic multipliers spreading benefits throughout economies. The evidence underscores the need to incorporate NbS in investment programs to concurrently address economic, environmental, and societal challenges. However, improved monitoring of economic, social and ecological outcomes and the development of comprehensive accounting systems are needed to better track public and private investments in NbS.
This independent economic study, commissioned by the RSPB, National Trust and The Wildlife Trusts, is the best evidence yet for how much investment is needed and how it needs to be spent. The analysis shows an annual investment of up to £5.9 billion will be required for at least the next ten years, demonstrating a costed pathway to deliver legally binding nature and climate targets, and ultimately help secure the future of British farming.
Scaling funding to effective nature-based solutions (NbS) for adaptation is key to tackle climate change and support sustainable development. NbS can play a crucial role in adaptation and investments deliver multidimensional benefits for climate mitigation, resilience, people and livelihoods as well as the protection, maintenance, or enhancement of biodiversity. UNEP estimates that approximately $11tn of investment in NbS is required between 2022 to 2050, equating to over $500bn of annual investment by 2030. This means that investment into NbS needs to be quickly and drastically scaled from its current levels of around $200bn per year.
Integration of Nature-based solution (NBS) as adaptation in planning and policy remains a challenge due to lack of adequate information on economic feasibility. This is mainly due to non-availability of economic evaluation framework for informed decision. Present study tries to address this by examining the status of evaluation frameworks through a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2023. Based on the synthesis of the evidence a five-step framework, exclusively for economic evaluation of NBS as urban adaptation has been developed. Using this a novel, holistic, just, equitable and inclusive cyclical decision tool has been proposed. The review confirmed the lack of economic assessment and a holistic evaluation framework. The evaluation framework has been backed by operational guidance by providing comprehensive recommendations on the methodologies, tools and techniques and indicators and metrics that can be used for execution of each step. The proposed cyclical decision tool facilitates equity and justice by having provisions for ensuring equal participation of each stakeholder in decision making. It specifically ensures incorporation of plurality of knowledge and in particular value of the ecosystem services (ESs) from NBS. The tool has applicability across the urban spatial scale in cities of developed and developing economies.
Tropical forests play a crucial role in achieving the sustainable development goals by contributing to climate stability, conserving biodiversity and sustaining livelihoods. However, forests are disappearing due to agricultural expansion. In West Africa, cocoa production is a major driver of deforestation. This study examines the design and implementation of forest-focused supply chain policies (FSPs) in cocoa supply chains in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the world’s two leading cocoa producers. FSPs are voluntary policies of companies to combat deforestation, restore forests, and improve farmers’ livelihoods. Drawing on 91 stakeholder interviews, we developed a conceptual framework to examine FSPs’ theory of change, implementation and potential effectiveness and equity. Our findings reveal shortcomings in FSPs’ design and implementation. FSPs are mostly narrowly focused on preventing illegal deforestation and only target farmers in companies’ ‘direct’ supply chains, neglecting important landscape-scale approaches and processes. Companies also fail to include smallholder farmers sufficiently in policy design and implementation. Lastly, FSPs prioritise productivity enhancement but overlook the importance of addressing farmers’ social norms and values. We provide recommendations on how to address the shortcomings to achieve sustainable cocoa production.
As momentum builds behind hugely ambitious initiatives like the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) 30 x 30 target and the European Union’s (EU’s) Biodiversity and Forestry Strategies, there is a danger that hard-won local conservation gains will be dissipated through leakage, the displacement of human activities that harm biodiversity away from the site of an intervention to other places (1). These off-site damages may be less than on-site gains—in which case the action is still beneficial but less so than it superficially seems. However, if activities are displaced to more biodiverse (or less productive) places, leakage impacts may exceed local benefits, so that well-intentioned efforts cause net harm. There is a pressing need for leakage effects like this to be acknowledged and as far as possible avoided or mitigated—through demand reduction, careful selection of conservation or restoration sites, or compensatory increases in production in lower-impact areas.
This research was conducted over the last year as part of the Hitachi-Imperial Centre for Decarbonisation and Natural Climate Solutions, with the aim of better understanding biodiversity and ecosystem function relationships. While we know that biodiversity often improves ecosystem functioning and so the provision of nature-based solutions, our goal was to synthesise disparate studies to build a complete, quantitative picture of how different kinds of ecosystem functions respond to biodiversity, since the shape of the relationship will be key for designing future interventions.
Animal pollination is important for more than 75% of agricultural crops, including coffee, whose productivity can increase with adequate pollination. Bees, including many solitary species, are diverse pollinators, with around 85% of them considered more effective than honeybees in pollen transfer. We assessed the coffee plantation and its surrounding vegetation for solitary bee nesting throughout the coffee flowering season and measured their impact on coffee productivity.
We installed collection stations with trap nests inside a coffee plantation, on the border and inside the native vegetation in a farm in Diamantina, MG, Brazil. We used 10 weekly monitored replicates at least 1 km apart. We evaluated fruiting by autogamy in relation to natural pollination and used the increase in fruit set from pollinators to calculate the farmer’s monetary gain. We recorded bee visits to the exposed flowers during coffee flowering considering both on the edge and inside the coffee plantation. Ripe fruits were dried, counted and weighed. We discovered 132 solitary bee nests outside the plantation, with 54% containing coffee pollen grains, indicating coffee as an essential resource for bees even outside the crop area. More bee visits occurred at the coffee plantation’s edge, resulting in increased fruit production, denser fruits, and rounder fruits in that area. Bagged flowers produced consistent seeds in all locations. The farmer could earn an extra US$1736.37 per hectare if the entire area received the same level of pollination contribution from bees as observed at the coffee border.
Intensive agriculture with high reliance on pesticides and fertilizers constitutes a major strategy for ‘feeding the world’. However, such conventional intensification is linked to diminishing returns and can result in ‘intensification traps’—production declines triggered by the negative feedback of biodiversity loss at high input levels. Here we developed a novel framework that accounts for biodiversity feedback on crop yields to evaluate the risk and magnitude of intensification traps. Simulations grounded in systematic literature reviews showed that intensification traps emerge in most landscape types, but to a lesser extent in major cereal production systems. Furthermore, small reductions in maximal production (5–10%) could be frequently transmitted into substantial biodiversity gains, resulting in small-loss large-gain trade-offs prevailing across landscape types. However, sensitivity analyses revealed a strong context dependence of trap emergence, inducing substantial uncertainty in the identification of optimal management at the field scale. Hence, we recommend the development of case-specific safety margins for intensification preventing double losses in biodiversity and food security associated with intensification traps.
Sustaining yields for smallholder perennial agriculture under a rapidly changing climate regime may require consideration of landscape features and on-farm management decisions in tandem. Optimising landscape and management may not be possible for maximising yields in any one year but maintaining heterogeneous landscapes could be an important climate adaptation strategy. In this study, we observed elevation, forest patch and shade management gradients affecting smallholder coffee (Coffea arabica) yields in a ‘normal’ year versus the 2015/16 El Niño. We generally found a benefit to yields from having leguminous shade trees and low canopy openness, while maintaining diverse shade or varying canopy openness had more complex influences during a climate shock. The two years of observed climate shock were dominated by either drought or high temperatures, with yield responses generally negative. Climate projections for East Africa predict more erratic rainfall and higher temperatures, which will disproportionately impact smallholder farmers.
The Cerrado is the second largest biome in Latin America and the most biodiverse savanna in the world. Yet it has lost half its native vegetation to agriculture – and conversion is accelerating. Urgent action is needed to balance production with protection, in a way that delivers gains for climate, nature and people.
The creation of wetlands along river channels, or inter-levee floodplain wetlands (ILWs), increases the cross-sectional area of rivers for flood control and is an effective nature-based solution (NbS) that is expected to achieve both flood control and biodiversity conservation in floodplains in riverine areas in Japan. To clarify the differences in habitat functions between ILWs and rice paddy fields, we surveyed the species assemblage and habitat usage of aquatic animal assemblages in ILWs and nearby rice paddies in the Nobi Plain of central Japan. Rana japonica bred in the ILWs, and taxon numbers of Odonata larvae and aquatic Hemiptera were greater in ILWs than in rice paddies. Fish taxa were also more abundant in the ILWs. ILWs were characterized mainly by taxa with a preference for permanent water bodies in their life history, whereas Dryophytes japonicus, Pelophylax porosus brevipodus, and Fejervarya kawamurai inhabited and bred mainly in the rice paddies, and the number of taxa of aquatic Coleoptera was also higher. The assemblages in the rice paddies were characterized by pioneer taxa with a preference for temporary waters as their primary breeding sites. Our results show that the creation of ILWs for flood control and the maintenance of rice paddies could help to conserve the original floodplain biodiversity through the complementarity of these different wetland types.
Nature-based solutions (NbS) have received increased interest as cost-effective contributors to addressing societal challenges, with ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) being the specific approach for reducing disaster risk under the NbS umbrella. Ecosystem services (ES) provided by Eco-DRR measures are known to contribute to reducing all three components of disaster risk. Yet, Eco-DRR evaluation falls short of recognising this, and this hampers its strategic placement and effective use. This paper addresses the challenge of evaluating the impact of Eco-DRR measures on reducing hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The methodological approach for Eco-DRR evaluation is developed for agroforestry as an example of ecosystem-based measure for flood risk reduction. The literature review on ES provided by cropland versus agroforestry provided the basis to elaborate on how the quantitative evaluation of such a measure for flood risk reduction could be realised in a next step. An additional literature review served to create a look-up table on the effects of agroforestry on hydrological processes in comparison to cropland. This can serve as input for re-running the hydrological model and comparing the hazard before and after the agroforestry implementation. The paper also captures the effects of agroforestry implementation on social and ecological vulnerability through changes in ES provision. Changes in ES provision resulting from the implementation of an agroforestry measure on cropland were related to social and ecological vulnerability using a deductive approach. The concept for comprehensive evaluation developed in this paper provides the groundwork for evaluating the risk reduction potential of Eco-DRR with reference to a tailored risk assessment.
Extreme weather events have severe impacts on food systems, especially for smallholders in global food value chains (GFVCs). There is an urgent need to understand (a) how climate shocks manifest in food systems, and (b) what strategies can enhance food system resilience. Integrating satellite, household and trade data, we investigate the cascading impacts after two consecutive hurricanes on smallholder banana farmers in Dominican Republic, and determinants of their recovery. We found that farmers experienced an ‘all-or-nothing’ pattern of damage, where 75% of flooded farmers lost > 90% of production. Recovery of regional production indicators took ca. 450 days. However, farm-level recovery times were highly variable, with both topographic and human capital factors determining recovery. Utilising this case study, we show that engaging in a GFVC impeded recovery via ‘double exposure’ of production loss and losing market access. Our results suggest that strategies to enhance resilience, with a particular focus on recovery, in GFVCs should promote trader loyalty, facilitate basin-scale collaboration and expand risk-targeted training.
With its whopping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enormous deforestation footprint, and massive waste lagoons (some visible even from space!), industrial animal agriculture is often dubbed the new fossil fuel. Dominated by a handful of mega-corporations, the livestock industry is already a major driver of the climate crisis.1 Given its projected growth, the industry is likely, by 2030, to use up 49% of the allowable budget for a relatively safe 1.5°C temperature rise.2 Yet, the climate commitments of big meat and dairy companies are little more than a cop-out. Their emissions reporting is inadequate at best, and fraught with greenwashing at worst. Despite this, between 2015 and 2020, 2,500 financial institutions ranging from high-street banks to pension funds and asset managers to universities shelled out over $478 billion USD to back meat and dairy operations globally.3 With stricter climate regulations on the horizon, these loans and investments run the risk of turning into “stranded assets,” suffering write-downs or devaluations.
Finite land is under pressure to provide food, timber, human infrastructure, climate change mitigation, and wildlife habitat. Given the inherent trade-offs associated with land-use choices, there is a need to assess how alternative land-use trajectories will impact the delivery of these benefits. Here, we develop nine exploratory, climate change mitigation-driven land-use scenarios for the UK. The scenario that maximized deployment of nature-based solutions reduced greenhouse gas (CO2e) emissions from the land sector by >100% by 2050 but resulted in a 21% decline in food production.
All mitigation scenarios delivered aggregate increases in habitat availability for 109 bird species (including 61 species of conservation concern), although farmland-associated species lost habitat. Our study reiterates the potential of nature-based solutions to address global climate and biodiversity challenges but also highlights risks to farmland wildlife and the importance of food system reform to mitigate potential reductions in primary food production.
Across the globe, the expansion of large-scale commodity agriculture is occurring not into empty space but over existing social systems. An understanding of the dynamics of expansion and associated impacts of commodity agriculture thus fundamentally requires examining how existing control regimes are dissolved and, simultaneously, how novel ones are assembled in order to make way for the changes in resources use that characterize these transitional moments. With this in mind, in this article, I provide a broad review of the strategies used to secure control over land prospected for agricultural commodity production, distinguishing between the tactics that are applied by agro-interested actors in order to ‘break down’ forms of existing land control, those they apply in parallel to ‘build up’ new control structures, and those strategies that are applied by actors (often smallholders) wishing to ‘hold on to’ the control that they have. I then present a framework for examining the dynamics of control transfer that builds on this analytical structure of ‘breaking down’, ‘building up’, and ‘holding on to’ control.
The Cerrado biome in Brazil is the most biodiverse savannah in the world1 and has a key role in stabilizing both the local and the global climate, storing carbon and providing fresh water to the country2. Yet, the Cerrado has little protection and is being converted for agriculture at an alarming rate. Recently released official data reveal that, in 2022, deforestation in the biome rose for the third consecutive year3. The area cleared was 25% higher than the previous year, reaching 10,689 km² (ref. 3), rivalling the rates of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (12,479 km²), despite the Cerrado being only half the size3. Almost three-quarters of that conversion took place in the MATOPIBA agricultural frontier, where nearly 25% of Cerrado’s soybean harvest is planted4. The current high rates of conversion even jeopardize the future of agricultural production in the Cerrado. The loss of the Cerrado has contributed to extreme climate events over the past decade5, which increased surface-sensible heat flux, reduced evapotranspiration and crop yields and threatened the feasibility of multi-cropping systems6, as well as exacerbated land concentration and farmers’ indebtedness.
Global water security is critical for human health, well-being, and economic stability. However, freshwater environments are under increasing anthropogenic pressure and now, more than ever, there is an urgent need for integrated approaches that couple issues of water security and the remediation of degraded aquatic environments. One such strategy is the use of floating treatment wetlands (FTW), which are artificial floating mats that sustain and support the growth of macrophytes capable of removing nutrients from over-enriched waterbodies. In this study, we quantify a range of indicators associated with FTWs, planted with different vegetation community types (i.e., monocultures and polycultures) over the course of a three-year field-scale study. The composition of the two different types of FTWs changed significantly with a convergence in diversity and community composition between the two types of FTWs. Phytoremediation potential of the two FTW communities, in terms of nutrient standing stocks, were also similar but did compare favourably to comparable wild-growing plant communities. There were few substantial differences in invertebrate habitat provision under the FTWs, although the high incidence of predators demonstrated that FTWs can support diverse macroinvertebrate communities. This field-scale study provides important practical insights for environmental managers and demonstrates the potential for enhanced ecosystem service provision from employing nature-based solutions, such as FTWs, in freshwater restoration projects.
Three approaches that aim to cut the harms of agriculture — land sharing, rewilding and organic farming — risk driving up food imports and causing environmental damage overseas. An alternative approach is both effective and cheaper.
With agriculture the main driver of the habitat loss and degradation that underpin the global biodiversity crisis1, governments worldwide have implemented policies to lessen farming’s impact on the environment. Meanwhile, landowners, organizations interested in the financing of biodiversity conservation and certain non-governmental groups, including conservation bodies, have been pushing for land-use changes that benefit nature.
However, numerous studies show that some of today’s most popular conservation policies are doing little to help those species most affected by farming. What’s more, by reducing how much food is produced per unit area (yield), they are driving up food imports and thereby having an impact on wildlife overseas.
Humanity is facing major social and ecological impacts from climate change and biodiversity loss. These two crises are intertwined, with common causes and effects on one another. Pörtner et al. review the results of a joint meeting of members of the International Panels on Climate Change and Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. They discuss the connections between biodiversity loss and climate change and propose potential solutions for addressing them as interconnected problems. Drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, protection of multiuse landscapes and seascapes, and policies for providing equitable access to natural resources can help to ensure future ecological function and human well-being. —BEL
Humankind faces a Triple Challenge: averting dangerous climate change, reversing biodiversity loss, and supporting the wellbeing of a growing population. Action to address each of these issues is inherently dependent on action to address the others. Local, national, and international policy goals on climate change, biological diversity, and human wellbeing have been set. Current implementation measures are insufficient to meet these goals, but the Triple Challenge can still be met if governments, corporations, and other stakeholders take a holistic perspective on management of land and waters. To inform this effort, we identify a set of priority policy responses drawn from recent international assessments that, whilst not being the only potential solutions, can form the core of such a holistic approach. We do this through an iterative process using three methodological approaches: (i) structured literature review; (ii) deliberative expert analysis; and (iii) wider consultation, before synthesizing into this paper. Context-appropriate implementation of responses will be needed to capitalize on potential policy synergies and to ensure that unavoidable trade-offs between management of land and waters for climate mitigation, biodiversity restoration, and human wellbeing outcomes are made explicit. We also set out four approaches to managing trade-offs that can promote fair and just transitions: (1) social and economic policy pivoting towards ‘inclusive wealth’; (2) more integrated policymaking across the three areas; (3) ‘Triple Challenge dialogues’ among state and non-state actors; and (4) a new research portfolio to underpin (1), (2), and (3).
Wetland area in agricultural landscapes has been heavily reduced to gain land for crop production, but in recent years there is increased societal recognition of the negative consequences from wetland loss on nutrient retention, biodiversity and a range of other benefits to humans. The current trend is therefore to re-establish wetlands, often with an aim to achieve the simultaneous delivery of multiple ecosystem services, i.e., multifunctionality. Here we review the literature on key objectives used to motivate wetland re-establishment in temperate agricultural landscapes (provision of flow regulation, nutrient retention, climate mitigation, biodiversity conservation and cultural ecosystem services), and their relationships to environmental properties, in order to identify potential for tradeoffs and synergies concerning the development of multifunctional wetlands. Through this process, we find that there is a need for a change in scale from a focus on single wetlands to wetlandscapes (multiple neighboring wetlands including their catchments and surrounding landscape features) if multiple societal and environmental goals are to be achieved. Finally, we discuss the key factors to be considered when planning for re-establishment of wetlands that can support achievement of a wide range of objectives at the landscape scale.
Justice and fairness have become key considerations in sustainability pathways and nature-based solutions (NBS), following activists and critical scholars who have long argued that the urban environment is an inherently political space that requires an analysis of benefits and burdens associated with its existence, use, and access. However, what justice means and how it is expressed, recognized, or achieved is often implicit in the literature on NBS, even though underlying notions of justice shape the analysis done and actions proposed. This paper starts from the premise that justice knows many different interpretations, therefore warranting scholars and practitioners working on NBS to carefully consider the differences and frictions between competing meanings of justice. Drawing from the history of social and environmental justice theory, we give an account of some key justice dilemmas and discuss their tenets as it relates to the end, means, and participants in the making of justice. From this, we draw out questions and commitments academics and practitioners in the NBS space should grapple with more explicitly. We argue that the emergent tension between pragmatic policy approaches and critical theoretical engagement is hindering a version of NBS that goes beyond a reflection of the justice implications of NBS to ensuring that NBS contributes to the furthering of justice. We advocate for the inclusion of critical social sciences and humanities perspectives and approaches beyond tokenism to instead encourage ontological, epistemological, and political reflection of the work academics and practitioners do in the NBS space.