Outputs
Below is a collection of Nature-based Solutions Initiative outputs from our team or closely related partners. For academic papers solely on Nature-based Solutions see our bibliography.
67 results found
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A menu of standards for green infrastructure in England: effective and equitable or a race to the bottom?
January 2025This paper draws on original research into the design of a menu of GI standards for England, commissioned by Natural England—a United Kingdom Government agency. It describes the evolution of the standards within the context of United Kingdom government policy initiatives for nature and climate.
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Tree Diversity Increases Carbon Stocks and Fluxes Above—But Not Belowground in a Tropical Forest Experiment
January 2025We show that tree diversity significantly increased aboveground C stocks and fluxes, with a 57% higher gain in aboveground tree C in five-species mixtures compared to monocultures 16 years after planting.
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Is the Implementation of Cocoa Companies’ Forest Policies on Track to Effectively and Equitably Address Deforestation in West Africa?
January 2025This study examines the design and implementation of forest-focused supply chainpolicies (FSPs) in cocoa supply chains in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the world's two leading cocoa producers.
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Unpacking the politics of Nature-based Solutions governance: Making space for transformative change
January 2025Participatory governance is touted as a driver of transformative change, but often falls short of its promises. Dominant framings can reinforce vested interests and marginalise alternative perspectives. Technoscientific and market-oriented approaches, risk and uncertainty, and “democracy washing” shape transformative NbS.
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Advancing nature-based solutions through enhanced soil health monitoring in the United Kingdom
November 2024This paper examines challenges and opportunities in selecting suitable soil health metrics. We find that standardization can facilitate widespread monitoring of soil health with benefits for stakeholders and user groups
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Harnessing Nature-based Solutions For Economic Recovery
November 2024This policy briefing outlines the key role of nature-based solutions (NbS) in supporting sustainable economic recovery and societal resilience.
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A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Methods to Inform the Scale-Up of Carbon Dioxide Removal Interventions
November 2024A new paper, led by Dr Isabela Butnar of UCL and NbSI’s Dr John Lynch, argues that we currently have only limited evidence to address these important questions.
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Growing Positive Change – NbS Conference Report
October 2024We are delighted to announce the release of our NbS Conference 2024 Report and Recordings, highlighting critical actions for aligning climate and biodiversity agendas to support social-ecological flourishing.
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Harnessing nature-based solutions for economic recovery: A systematic review
October 2024A systematic review of 66 reviews on the economic impact of nature-based interventions. 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.
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Integrated modeling of nature’s role in human well-being: A research agenda
September 2024We identify five research frontiers for integrated social-economic-ecological modeling (primarily focused on terrestrial systems) to incorporate biodiversity and ecosystem services: 1) downscaling impacts of direct and indirect drivers on ecosystems; 2) incorporating feedbacks in ecosystems; 3) linking ecological impacts to human well-being, 4) disaggregating outcomes for distributional equity considerations, and 5) incorporating dynamic feedbacks of ecosystem services on the social-economic system.
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A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Methods to Inform the Scale-Up of Carbon Dioxide Removal Interventions
August 2024This article critically reviews CDR LCA case-studies through three key lenses relevant to policy decision-making on sustainable CDR scale-up, namely comparability across CDR assessments, assessment of the climatic merit of a CDR intervention, and consideration of wider CDR co-benefits and impacts.
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Using policy scenarios to assess challenges and opportunities for reaching restoration targets in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest
June 2024In this study we simulate the impacts of alternative restoration policies addressing targets for Brazil, and explore their impacts on selected terrestrial species and agricultural development potential in the Atlantic Forest biome.
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Does ‘net zero’ mean zero cows?
May 2024A significant share of anthropogenic global warming comes from livestock production. There is debate about whether there can be any role for livestock in a climatically sustainable future; the debate is particularly heated for cows and sheep, largely due to the methane they burp out.
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A restatement of the natural science evidence base concerning grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage
January 2024This paper describes a project that set out to summarise the natural science evidence base relevant to grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage potential in as policy-neutral terms as possible.
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Considering the Cross-Boundary Environmental and Social Implications of the EU’s Carbon Dioxide Removal Strategy in Brazil
January 2024This book is a core output from the Horizon Europe project SSH CENTRE: Social Sciences and Humanities for Climate, Energy and Trans- port Research Excellence that includes findings from novel interdisciplinary collaborations which were catalysed and funded by the project.
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Young mixed planted forests store more carbon than monocultures—a meta-analysis
November 2023To determine whether diversification of plantations would enhance aboveground carbon storage, we systematically reviewed over 11,360 publications, and acquired data from a global network of tree diversity experiments. We compiled a maximum dataset of 79 monoculture to mixed comparisons from 21 sites with all variables needed for a meta-analysis.
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NbS in Climate Change Policy: Guarding Against Greenwashing at COP28
November 2023In this guide we strongly urge Parties and non-state actors at COP28 to establish strong governance for high-integrity nature-based solutions (in line with the IUCN Global Standard[1]) and ensure that they are not misused to justify inaction on ongoing emissions.
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Contributions of Nature-Based Solutions to Reduce Peoples’ Vulnerabilities to Climate Change across the Rural Global South
November 2023We analyse 85nature-based interventions across the rural Global South, and factors mediating their effectiveness,based on a systematic map of peer-reviewed studies encompassing a wide diversity of ecosystems,climate impacts, and intervention types
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Nature-based Infrastructure: How natural infrastructure solutions can address sustainable development challenges and the triple planetary crisis
October 2023The study identifies five functions through which NbI can provide benefits with respect to the provision of infrastructure services.
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Smallholder Resilience to Extreme Weather Events in Global Food Value Chains
October 2023Integrating 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.
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The new EU carbon removal certification: Landmark legislation or an empty promise?
September 2023Recognizing the importance of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) for meeting climate targets globally and in the European Union (EU), the European Commission has proposed a certification framework for voluntary CDR. But without urgent improvements in three key areas, it is unlikely to achieve its goals.
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Scaling up Nature-based Solutions in England’s National Climate Change Adaptation Programme
September 2023Conventional engineered options for climate adaptation (such as dams, sea walls or air-conditioning) are often energy-intensive and may have adverse impacts on biodiversity. In contrast, NbS offer multiple additional benefits for people, nature and the economy.
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Developing A UK Seagrass Code
June 2023Seagrass protection and restoration would provide valuable carbon removal and storage, alongside substantial benefits for people and nature, but more needs to be done to encourage this through policy and nature financing.
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Current policies are insufficient to protect or restore Brazil’s cost-effective conservation priority zones
May 2023In Brazil, conservation priority zones, in spite of their key role in preserving natural vegetation and its environmental resources are frequently located outside the country's public network of protected areas (PAs). Here we present the first study on land-use impacts inside Brazil's unprotected (i.e. outside PAs) Cost-Effective conservation priority Zones (CEZs), for the period 2020–2050.
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