Building social-ecological resilience in a warming world

Even if humanity limits the global temperature increase, feedbacks and inertia in the global climate system mean that adaptation is essential.

While the default approach to addressing human adaptation to climate change involves engineered interventions, carefully designed nature-based solutions in a range of ecosystems can work with and sometimes improve upon these approaches and can generally do so at lower economic cost once the broader benefits of NbS are taken into account. Using global and regional systematic reviews together with on-the-ground empirical work, our research examines the role of NbS in:

1. Reducing exposure to the immediate impacts of climate change.
2. Lowering social sensitivity to climate impacts by supporting diversification of sources of food and income.
3. Building adaptive capacity through the process of designing, implementing and managing nature-based interventions.

We are particularly interested in for whom NbS bring benefits in a rapidly warming world, and the mechanisms linking human and ecological resilience.

Credible and sustainable pathways to achieving net-zero

Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems and sustainably managing our working lands and seas play a critical role in reaching net-zero carbon emissions this century, but only if combined with other climate solutions, especially dramatic cuts in GHG emissions across all sectors of the economy. Our work explores the contribution of NbS to achieving net-zero and investigates how NbS for climate change mitigation can be taken to scale without compromising biodiversity, food security or other sustainable development goals. We address these questions using a diversity of approaches including systematic literature reviews, global and regional geospatial analyses, Integrated Assessment models, economic landuse modelling, and on-the-ground empirical studies. Current work focuses on identifying pathways to achieving net-zero in the UK and Brazil, taking into account issues such as leakage and additionality, as well as socioeconomic barriers to implementation.

Understanding for whom NbS bring benefits, and how

We work with a wide international network of researchers to synthesise and generate empirical and theoretical knowledge on the key and priority social elements of NbS. This is based on our understanding of NbS as a co-production process with social and ecological elements that interact across scales. Our work explores how key social concepts such as power, agency, knowledge and narratives can be used by researchers and practitioners alike to understand how to govern NbS for more effective, equitable and resilient outcomes. We draw from mixed methodologies, including quantitative qualitative social science methods, as well as participatory approaches for working with stakeholders, including historically-marginalised groups.

Measuring and monitoring biodiversity outcomes of NbS

Biodiversity is a key determinant of the health and resilience of ecosystems, and their capacity to provide multiple benefits to all members of human societies in a warming world. Yet biodiversity is often overlooked in climate change policy and practice. To address this, we use geospatial analyses, systematic reviews and field studies in the UK and overseas to i) build the evidence base on the outcomes for biodiversity of nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and ii) support the development of metrics and tools for capturing the value of NbS.

Economic recovery potential of investments in nature

Nature-based solutions can provide strong employment per dollar of public spending compared to other stimulus measures and deliver high economic multipliers, yet inclusion of NbS in economic recovery packages is limited.

Part of the problem is a lack of robust evidence. To address this, we are using systematic reviews and detailed case study work, to compile evidence on the short-term economic recovery potential (e.g. job creation, income) as well as longer term development outcomes (e.g. climate change adaptation, food and water security) of investments in nature. The goal is to translate and share this information with key decision-makers during critical policy windows and support the development of economic recovery plans and the revision of associated climate and development policies.

Case studies and guidelines for policy and practice

NbS can address both climate change and biodiversity loss, but only if we:

1. Rapidly phase out use of fossil fuels;
2. Protect, restore and connect a wide range of ecosystems across working lands and seas;
3. Place the rights and knowledge of local communities and Indigenous Peoples front and centre of policy and practice; and,
4. Explicitly design NbS so that they support biodiversity.

To help achieve synergy among climate change and biodiversity goals through the implementation of NbS, we support the development of evidence-based guidelines for decision makers in business and government, based on these critical factors, and we collate and showcase good practice examples of NbS projects from around the world.