In light of the critical role of tropical forests in stabilizing the global climate system through both carbon and noncarbon pathways, maintaining and increasing incentives for large-scale forest conservation is an essential component of climate action. Demand for carbon credits, one of the most promising mechanisms for funding large-scale forest conservation, has grown rapidly in recent years, with the voluntary carbon market seeing transactions worth almost US$2 billion in 2021. In 2022, however, the volume of transactions leveled off, at least in part due to concerns about reputational risk from corporate buyers afraid of greenwashing accusations.
Archives: Publications
Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), in collaboration with IIED, is implementing the project ‘Establishing a biocultural heritage territory to protect Kenya’s Kaya Forests’ in the Rabai Mijikenda community. Rabai sub-county forms part of the Coastal Forests global biodiversity hotspot, currently under threat. The project aims to conserve biodiversity and genetic resources in four sacred Kaya forests and across the landscape. It also aims to enhance livelihoods and establish a community institution for collective governance of the Rabai Biocultural Heritage Territory.
The mid-term project workshop brought together the community and key government agencies to review progress and challenges with establishing a collectively governed biocultural heritage territory in Rabai and develop strategies to address them.
Early in August this year, a high-profile summit was held in Belém, Brazil, where the eight Amazonian countries discussed the future of the Amazon. The nations recognized that the Amazon is very close to reaching a tipping point for turning into a degraded ecosystem. The result of their discussions was the Belém Declaration, an ambitious plan to protect and conserve the Amazon forests and to support Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Concern arose, however, because they failed to agree on attaining zero deforestation by 2030 and on avoiding new explorations in the Amazon for fossil fuel. The Declaration also lacks specific and measurable indicators. The ministers of Foreign Affairs therefore have a very important role in further refining the agenda and deadlines so that the Belém Declaration can be implemented.
For over three decades, science has pointed to the risks of the Amazon reaching a tipping point. Several recent studies now demonstrate how close it is: The dry season over southern Amazon has lengthened by 4 to 5 weeks over the past 40 years, the mortality of wet-loving tree species has increased, and the loss of trees is turning the forests into a carbon source rather than a carbon sink.
Experiments under controlled conditions have established that ecosystem functioning is generally positively related to levels of biodiversity, but it is unclear how widespread these effects are in real-world settings and whether they can be harnessed for ecosystem restoration. We used remote-sensing data from the first decade of a long-term, field-scale tropical restoration experiment initiated in 2002 to test how the diversity of planted trees affected recovery of a 500-ha area of selectively logged forest measured using multiple sources of satellite data. Replanting using species-rich mixtures of tree seedlings with higher phylogenetic and functional diversity accelerated restoration of remotely sensed estimates of aboveground biomass, canopy cover, and leaf area index. Our results are consistent with a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the lowland dipterocarp rainforests of SE Asia and demonstrate that using diverse mixtures of species can enhance their initial recovery after logging.
Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.
Carbon offsets from voluntary avoided-deforestation projects are generated on the basis of performance in relation to ex ante deforestation baselines. We examined the effects of 26 such project sites in six countries on three continents using synthetic control methods for causal inference. We found that most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation. For projects that did, reductions were substantially lower than claimed. This reflects differences between the project ex ante baselines and ex post counterfactuals according to observed deforestation in control areas. Methodologies used to construct deforestation baselines for carbon offset interventions need urgent revisions to correctly attribute reduced deforestation to the projects, thus maintaining both incentives for forest conservation and the integrity of global carbon accounting.
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) projects are intended to decrease carbon emissions from forests to offset other carbon emissions and are often claimed as credits to be used in calculating carbon emission budgets. West et al. compared the actual effects of these projects with measurable baseline values and found that most of them have not reduced deforestation significantly, and those that did had benefits substantially lower than claimed (see the Perspective by Jones and Lewis). Thus, most REDD projects are less beneficial than is often claimed.
Conserving tropical forests is of utmost importance for the future of humanity and biodiversity. Changes in land use, mostly deforestation in the tropics, emit 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually—second only to fossil fuel use, which emits 35 billion tons (1). Reducing emissions to net zero is necessary to stabilize global temperatures (2). One controversial approach to tackle fossil-fuel emissions from private companies, individuals, and governments has been to “offset” them by investing in projects to either stop emissions that would have otherwise occurred, such as by reducing deforestation, or by investing in carbon uptake projects, such as forest restoration. On page 873 of this issue, West et al. (3) show that offsetting through paying projects to reduce emissions by conserving tropical forests is not reducing deforestation as claimed and is worsening climate change.
Nature-Based Solutions can be considered one of the best answers to the various consequences and problems caused by climate change, poor urbanisation and population growth. They are used not only as measures for the protection, sustainable management and restoration of natural and modified ecosystems but also as measures to mitigate certain natural disasters such as erosion, flooding, drought, storm surge and landslide. The benefit is for both biodiversity and human well-being. This paper reviews articles about optimising the selection and placement of Nature-Based Solutions. It presents several Operations Research approaches used in the context of climate adaptation. The analysis provided in this paper focuses on various case studies, state-of-the-art on Nature-Based Solutions, Operations Research algorithms, dissertations, and other papers dealing with infrastructure placement approaches in the context of climate adaptation.
Adaptation is increasing across all sectors globally. Yet, the effectiveness of adaptation is inadequate, and examples of maladaptation are increasing. To reduce the risk of maladaptation, we propose the framework, Navigating the Adaptation–Maladaptation continuum (NAM). This framework is composed of six criteria relating to outcomes of adaptation for ecosystems, the climate (greenhouse gases emissions) and social systems (transformational potential) as well as equity-related outcomes for low-income populations, women/girls and marginalized ethnic groups. We apply the NAM framework to a set of representative adaptation options showing that considerable variation exists in the potential for adaptation or the risk of maladaptation. We suggest that decision-makers assess adaptation interventions against the NAM framework criteria and prioritize responses that reduce the risk of maladaptation.
This article updates our previous comprehensive meta-analysis of what drives and stops deforestation (Busch and Ferretti-Gallon 2017). By including six additional years of research, this article more than doubles the evidence base to 320 spatially explicit econometric studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals from 1996 to 2019. We find that deforestation is consistently associated with greater accessibility (as influenced by natural features such as slope and elevation and built infrastructure such as roads, cities, and cleared areas) and with higher economic returns (from agriculture, livestock, and timber). Some demographic variables are consistently associated with less deforestation (e.g., Indigenous people, poverty, and age) or more deforestation (e.g., population), and others are not associated with the level of deforestation (e.g., education and gender). Policies that directly influence allowable land-use activities are associated with less deforestation (e.g., protected areas, enforcement of forest laws, payments for ecosystem services, community forest management, and certification of sustainable commodities). But policies and institutions that primarily seek other ends are not consistently associated with more or less deforestation (e.g., democracy, general governance, conflict abatement, and land-tenure security). We introduce reforestation and forest degradation as new dependent variables alongside deforestation. Greater population is consistently associated with more forest degradation, whereas steeper slope, greater distance from cities, and lower population are consistently associated with more reforestation.
The European Union’s Biodiversity and Forest Strategies for 2030 mandate protecting all remaining old-growth forests across the EU, increasing the area of habitat patches set aside within forests harvested for timber, and limiting clear-felling in timber-producing landscapes (1). Although saving old-growth forests is critical, stand-alone policies can produce unintended consequences (2). Without simultaneously reducing demand for forest products or increasing supply from plantations and secondary forests, such measures can lead to increased harvesting elsewhere, often in tropical countries, to accommodate demand. Shifting logging activities to countries with weaker legal protections aggravates biodiversity and carbon losses and exacerbates existing inequities in environmental burdens (3). Isolated policies displacing production will also undermine the EU’s recent Deforestation Regulation to halt imports of deforestation-linked tropical products (4).
Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.
There is potential for nature-based solutions (NbS) to contribute to climate-resilient development (CRD) due to their integrated approach to mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development. However, despite alignment between NbS and CRD’s objectives, realization of this potential is not guaranteed. A CRD pathways (CRDP) approach helps to analyze the complexities of the relationship between CRD and NbS, and a climate justice lens enables the identification of the multiple ways that NbS can support or undermine CRD by foregrounding the politics inherent in deciding between NbS trade-offs. We use stylized vignettes of potential NbS to examine how the dimensions of climate justice reveal the potential of NbS to contribute to CRDP. We consider tensions in NbS projects between local and global climate objectives, and the potential for NbS framing to reinforce inequalities or unsustainable practices. Ultimately, we present a framework that combines climate justice and CRDP in an analytical tool for understanding the potential for a NbS to support CRD in specific places.
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.
The review aims to present the effects of climate change on biodiversity and its remedial measures using Nature based solution (Nbs). At least 40% of the world’s economy, and 80% of the economy of less industrialized nations, is derived directly from biological resources as a function of ecosystem service. Climate change is a key driver for mass extinction, latitudinal and altitudinal shifts of species location, change in species richness and composition, change in phenology, decline in ecosystem services and outbreak of plant and animal disease. The most important notable drivers behind the current loss of biodiversity are habitat modification, overexploitation, climate change, invasive alien species, and chains of extinction. Loss in biodiversity has been attributed primarily to changes in the intensity by which the land and sea are used (34% contribution to losses over the past century) and direct exploitation of species (23%), followed by climate change and pollution (14% each). The impact of climate change is projected to surpass other threats during the twenty-first century both through direct effects and intensifying interactions with other drivers. Under a global warming scenario of 1.5 °C warming, 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are projected to lose over half of their climatically determined geographic range. For global warming of 2 °C, the comparable fractions are 18% of insects, 16% of plants and 8% of vertebrates. Future warming of 3.2 °C above preindustrial levels is projected to lead to loss of more than half of the historical geographic range in 49% of insects, 44% of plants, and 26% of vertebrates. Nature based solutions such as protection of intact ecosystems, managing working lands and restoring native cover are some of the important measures for climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection, although it will be difficult to achieve without the reduction fossil fuel emissions.
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.
This report to Scottish Environment LINK Deer Group was commissioned by Woodland Trust Scotland.
The report lays out the challenge at hand: to reduce deer’s negative impact on the rainforest while also retaining their key role as a natural part of its ecosystem.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets a specific target for reducing the private sector’s negative impacts on biodiversity and increasing positive impacts, as part of overall efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss within the coming decade. In parallel, ‘nature positive’ is emerging as an inclusive and ambitious rallying call that aligns with the GBF. Yet tinkering with business as usual will not deliver these ambitions; calls for transformative change in business’s relationship with biodiversity are increasingly strong. However there remains a lack of clarity on how to operationalize transformative change in the context of nature positive, particularly how to develop meaningful actions and measurable targets. This gap risks confusion, greenwashing, and failure to achieve global goals. This article aims to fill this gap, by drawing on existing literature on social change to offer a practical framework for understanding and operationalizing transformative change for business and biodiversity. We define and describe the role of transformative change towards a nature positive ambition and summarize the different types and scales of transformative actions that companies could take into a simple framework, which we illustrate with case studies from food retail and mining. This framework could be used to help companies develop and plan transformative actions, set targets, and monitor progress over time, as well as hold them accountable to ‘transformative’ claims; however, it can only contribute to a nature positive commitment if it is implemented in parallel with meaningful actions to avoid, reduce, restore, and compensate for contemporary attributable impacts. We invite companies to test our framework for their own planning, decision-making and disclosures, to advance meaningful application of transformative actions towards delivery of transformative change for a nature positive future.
This technical report provides a set of recommendations to help plan, design, and implement nature-based solutions (NbS) for adaptation that enhances biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. It responds to a critical knowledge gap in designing, operationalizing, and monitoring “biodiversity-positive” NbS.
This report aims to help civil society organizations and actors who are managing or otherwise supporting climate change adaptation and development projects, including “nature positive” projects under Global Affairs Canada’s Partnering for Climate program.
The report is part of a compendium of resources developed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) for the Nature for Climate Adaptation Initiative (NCAI), which is supported by Global Affairs Canada.
Pressure is increasing globally to deliver integrated land use at large spatial scales (10–100 s km2) to address the climate and biodiversity emergencies through delivery of nature-based solutions. There is also pressure to decentralise land use decision-making to sub-national levels of government and multi-stakeholder partnerships, with the aim of improving policy targeting, coordination and participation. Whilst there has been significant research on these issues at smaller spatial and administrative scales, it is limited at larger scales. This paper addresses this gap, investigating whether the introduction of additional regional institutions can help address these challenges. It draws insights from Scotland’s decade old Land Use Strategy (LUS) and evolving Regional Land Use Partnerships (RLUPs) that aim to mitigate climate change through encouraging improved and integrated land use and land management. We find that despite considerable stakeholder support, such approaches may not deliver on their ambitions. An overarching finding relates to the importance of political commitment to implementation at these larger scales, which is crucial for establishing clear objectives, giving regions authority to respond to regional priorities, and ensuring adequate resourcing. This affects buy-in from stakeholders and the resolution of policy coordination challenges that the partnerships are meant to address. It has wider implications for the delivery of national climate policies, given the importance of land management in most climate change strategies. The insights, and the analytical framework used, are relevant for any country grappling with the challenge of implementing nature-based solutions at ever larger scales whilst bridging local and national land use priorities.
Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been central to the European Union’s drive to address climate change, ecological degradation, and promote urban prosperity. Via an examination of the Horizon 2020-funded URBAN GreenUP project in Liverpool, this paper explores mainstreaming NBS in city planning. It uses evidence from pre- and post-intervention surveys with Liverpool residents and interviews with local business, environmental, government, and community sector experts to illustrate how a complex interplay of scale, location, focus, and visibility of NBS influences perceptions of the added value of NBS. This paper highlights the requirement that NBS interventions be bespoke and responsive to the overarching needs of residents and other stakeholders. Moreover, we underscore the importance of expert input into the design, location, and maintenance of NBS and call for these key drivers of successful delivery to be better integrated into work programs. This paper also notes that the type and size of NBS interventions impact perceptions of their value, with smaller projects being viewed as less socially and ecologically valuable compared to larger investments. We conclude that while small-scale NBS can support climatic, health, or ecological improvements in specific instances, strategic, larger-scale, and more visible investments are required to accrue substantive benefits and gain acceptance of NBS as a legitimate and effective planning tool.
This paper aims to better understand the role of rural women in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and to provide insights on how to support them. The gender dimension remains underexplored in the literature on NbS. Most studies focus on the biophysical and technical aspects of NbS and their global and transboundary scales of impact. The studies that do investigate the social aspects, such as opportunity costs and poverty impacts, tend to treat households as a congruent unit, bypassing intrahousehold and gender dynamics. Research shows that the success of NbS hinges on the inclusion of critical stakeholders, including women.
This paper explores four NbS approaches—natural climate solutions (NCS), forest landscape restoration (FLR), ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), and payments for ecosystem services (PES)—using a gender lens. Complementing the general review of NbS approaches, the paper conducts three deep dives on PES projects from around the world, highlighting in both cases the different factors that enable or bar rural women from effectively participating and benefiting from interventions. The paper then provides high-level recommendations for enabling conditions and practices for a more gender-responsive approach to NbS necessary for climate-resilient, sustainable agroecosystems.
The primary outcome sought by this research is to support the donor community, development practitioners, and policymakers in designing and implementing NbS policies and programs that promote rural women’s agency as key stakeholders in NbS.
This study examines how residents of nature-based tourism destinations become supportive of sustainable tourism development based on an integrated theoretical framework that combines social exchange theory and bottom-up spillover theory. A survey of 364 residents in Jechon City, South Korea measured their perceptions of tourism impacts using a neutral-phrase questionnaire (non-forced approach). Results from structural equation modeling showed that residents perceive tourism as having a significant positive impact on material and non-material aspects of their lives, which leads to overall quality of life and support for sustainable tourism development. The integration of social exchange theory and bottom-up spillover theory proved to be a useful framework in predicting residents’ support for sustainable tourism development. The study results suggest that to foster local residents’ support for sustainable tourism development, planners should consider the impact of tourism on material and non-material aspects of residents’ lives, emphasize environmental considerations, and focus on long-term benefits.
A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct experiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fishery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality—representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previously thought.
The process of urbanization can alter the local climate to the point that it threatens citizens’ well-being by creating heat-related hazards. The construction of Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) can improve the regulation of surface energy exchange processes and address this problem. However, the time needed for a BGI to deliver a stable cooling performance, referred to here as the Cooling Establishment Time (CET), is poorly understood and quantified in the literature and dependent on environmental, design and maintenance factors. Here, we analyze the feasibility of using satellite data to derive the CET for different BGIs across the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Results showed that remote sensing can quantify the land surface temperature impact of BGIs and assist in estimating their CET. BGI with trees or climbing plants required a longer CET (seven to ten years) before any notable shift in surface temperatures were visible, while grasses or artificial irrigated systems led to shorter CETs (one to three years). These results allow us to better account for BGI cooling establishment when planning for areas that need urgent action under warming climates. This work supports evidence-based urban greenery planning and design towards cooling our increasingly warming cities in a timely manner.