Can Nature Save Us From Climate Change?

Nature plays a vital role in defending us from climate change, as stressed during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference 2024 (COP 16), which began in Colombia last week. At a time when the planet is facing more extreme weather events and adverse conditions, some scientists are now looking to Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) and green infrastructure as alternatives to traditional civil engineering and technology-based approaches to infrastructure development.

Nature-based solutions like forest restoration, soil management and bioenergy could provide a third of the mitigation needed for the Paris Agreement targets—offering a crucial pathway to safeguard the $44 trillion of global GDP threatened by nature loss.*

NBS advocates highlight that they are often more cost-efficient and energy-efficient than cement, steel or solutions that consume high amounts of power for cooling or water pumping. In both urban and rural landscapes, nature-based solutions are generally more visually appealing and offer multiple benefits, such as shading in high temperatures and water infiltration in heavy rainfall events.

Panel Insights: How Nature Can Protect Us From Extreme Weather Events

In this video, our internal panel of experts explores how nature can play a pivotal role in mitigating the devastating effects of climate change. From reducing the impact of extreme weather events to combating drought and mitigating the heat island effect, we delve into the science behind these nature-based solutions and discover real-world examples of their implementation.

3 Key Takeaways on Nature-Based Solutions:

• Mangroves, seagrasses, sand dunes and vegetation cover can serve as natural defences against floods, erosion and flash floods, providing a sustainable and resilient approach to infrastructure.
• Trees play a crucial role in climate adaptation, offering shade, regulating water, combating desertification, sequestering carbon and aiding in rewilding efforts.
• Restoring natural ecosystems through rewilding can help nature adapt to climate change, enhance biodiversity and provide additional benefits such as flood control and carbon storage.

Conversations With Experts: Exploring NBS for Flood Mitigation in Urban Areas

Nature isn’t new to us as a protector of our homes and the local environment. Pliny the Elder emphasised the importance of trees in retaining water, preventing landslides and other natural disasters nearly 2,000 years ago. He also described how deforestation leads to flooding.

In this interview, EcoOnline’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Richard Tipper, talks with Dr. Daniel Green, Assistant Professor of Nature-based Solutions at Heriot-Watt University. With an extensive background in urban flood mitigation, Dr. Green offers his thoughts on green infrastructure’s application in urban areas.

5 Key Takeaways From This Discussion:

• There is a growing interest in the use of “green infrastructure” of various types to mitigate surface water flooding from heavy and extreme rainfall in and around urban areas.
• While green infrastructure for flood mitigation has great potential and co-benefits, there is more research needed to understand how specific green areas perform in different rainfall events so that designs fulfill their requirements.?
• Context is important—with key differences of approach between building green elements into newly built areas versus upgrading and renovating existing urban areas.
• There’s a growing appreciation that green infrastructure will require some maintenance to maintain performance. Correct species mixtures will also be relevant in maintaining infiltration and drainage properties.
• Ideally, green infrastructure should be multipurpose—providing a combination of surface drainage, albedo reduction, shade and aesthetic properties.

Mapping Nature’s Value: Assessing Ecosystems With NBS Metrics

One of the key principles of NBS is to understand the value ecosystems already provide so that we start from the idea of not making things worse by degrading these ecosystem services.

EcoOnline has developed a global map showing the level of pristineness—defined as how untouched or minimally impacted an environment is by human activities—of different land areas and ecosystems. Using pristineness as a Normative Biodiversity Metric (NBM) offers a useful starting point to understand the level of human impact on vegetation within a given area, as well as which areas remain relatively intact or undisturbed. Richard Tipper demonstrates how the NBM works and how it can be used to assess the biodiversity of a given area.

Dive Deeper Into Biodiversity: Explore the interactive EcoOnline map.

Conversations with Experts: Unlocking the Value of NBS in Rural Landscapes

Richard Tipper discusses the use of NBS in rural areas of Mexico and Central America with consultant Felicia Line, who has worked on nature and climate-related development programmes for the past 10 years.

3 Key Takeaways From This Discussion:

• Nature-Based Solutions—sometimes referred to as Ecosystem-Based Adaptations—often involve restoring areas of land that have been degraded by activities such as overgrazing or slash-and-burn agriculture in the past. The main emphasis is on preventing soil erosion caused by heavy rains, which could result in landslides affecting villages, roads and fields.
• Hedge/living fences can improve soil quality and control runoff, as can leguminous trees for nitrogen fixation and composting.
• Providing clear results on the value of these measures, compared to climate mitigation actions whose results are measured in CO? emission reductions, has been challenging.

Dive Deeper Into Nature-Based Solutions

While there’s a growing list of NBS initiatives around the world, there are still few specific results and cost-effectiveness analyses. The following links offer relevant sources of NBS information available today:

• The?Urban Nature Atlas, comprising more than a thousand NBS cases globally, offers an impressive collection of geolocated applications. Readers can filter the cases by eight different types of NBSs.?
• The?Nature-Based Solutions Evidence Platform is an interactive tool, including 150+ cases. Note that its “empirical evidence” section mostly reports “positive” vs. “negative” outcomes.
• The?Scenario Modeling of NBS Effectiveness?by the NBS community at the University of Oxford provides access to 185 case studies with information on impacts cross-referenced by ecosystem type.

Start Your Business’ NBS Journey Now!

While businesses have a significant impact on nature, with $5 trillion of annual financial flows causing harm, only a small fraction is invested in NBS. To accelerate the adoption of NBS, companies need to recognise their potential as a powerful business tool. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has outlined a six-step blueprint to help businesses build business cases for NBS:

1. Identify key business challenges and opportunities.??
2. Explore NBS that is relevant to the company’s challenges and opportunities.
3. Collect information on the overall impacts and benefits to the business from the chosen NBS.
4. Identify the design and implementation process required.
5. Estimate the costs of NBS activities.
6. Compare NBS options to other solutions across the full range of benefits and costs.

With this approach, the WBCSD asserts that companies can maximize NBS value and deliver for climate, nature and equity.

Learn More About This Situation

What are nature-based solutions for infrastructure? — Global Infrastructure Hub

Natural Climate Solutions Resource Center — The Nature Conservancy

Nature-based solutions for adapting to water-related climate risks — OECD

Nature as Resilient Infrastructure – An Overview of Nature-Based Solutions — EESI

Types of Nature-Based Solutions — FEMA

DOI Nature-based Solutions Roadmap — U.S. Department of the Interior

The Nature-based Solutions Map — WBCSD

Building business cases for nature-based solutions — WBCSD

Examples of good nature-based solutions from around the world — NbS Initiative

News Stories We’re Following

Storm tracker: NHC watching system in Caribbean Sea, two systems in Pacific Ocean — USA Today?

Every country is negotiating a plan to save nature. Except the US. — Vox

In a boost for nature, governments announce $163 million in new pledges to Global Biodiversity Framework Fund — The GEF?

How biodiversity credits could help to conserve and restore nature — Nature Portfolio

Over 500 Companies Commit to Report on Nature, Biodiversity Risk Using TNFD Framework? — ESG Today

*Notes and Sources

Estimates suggest that nature-based solutions can provide 37% of the mitigation needed until 2030 to achieve the targets of the Paris Agreement. Cited from The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: https://files.ipbes.net/ipbes-web-prod-public-files/inline/files/ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_policymakers.pdf

The first report of the World Economic Forum’s New Nature Economy Report (NNER) series, Nature Risk Rising, highlighted that $44 trillion of economic value generation—over half the world’s total GDP—is potentially at risk as a result of the dependence of business on nature and its services. Cited from New Nature Economy Report II: The Future Of Nature And Business:?

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Future_Of_Nature_And_Business_2020.pdf

https://demography.ourecosystem.com/interface/