Climate Health

Why Nature Based Solutions?

• We are in the midst of a planetary emergency. Our planet is facing a deep and long-term climate crisis rooted in interconnected global challenges that require consistent and immediate action. Issues like global warming, deforestation, nature degradation, and pandemics are connected in a domino effect.
• Traction for NbS is gaining: NbS have been explicitly recognized and incorporated into several major international agreements. Many countries are increasingly incorporating NbS into their national climate action plans and development strategies. For example, China has pledged to invest heavily in large-scale ecological restoration projects, and Costa Rica has committed to becoming carbon-neutral by 2050, largely through NbS. Several international organizations and financial institutions have begun to increase their funding for NbS initiatives. Examples include the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank, and the Green Climate Fund. NbS momentum is gaining, and has been since early 2000. Recent policy changes and funding within the US mirror the growing recognition of NbS as a cost-effective means to address economic development and climate change simultaneously.
• Who gets funding for implementing NbS matters. A recent issue brief from Daughters for Earth makes the case that women-led projects and, in particular, indigenous women-led projects have an outsized potential impact on climate, biodiversity, and community health. The brief further asserts (and substantiates through referenced research that “today, only 0.2 percent of overseas climate finance reaches women-led efforts, while NbS remain underprioritized and underfunded…To unlock the full potential of NbS, policymakers and investors need to sustain funding and target resources to optimize environmental and socioeconomic impacts, the key to which is scaling up women-led climate action.”