Nature-based solutions: opportunities and challenges for scaling up

Nature-based Solutions are important for the global sustainable development agenda because they offer the potential to address, in an effective way, diverse challenges such as climate change, food and water insecurity, disaster impacts, and threats to human health and wellbeing, while reducing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Some of the challenges addressed by NbS, including biodiversity loss and climate action, cannot be fully tackled without this contribution. This does not mean that other actions, such as rapid decarbonisation of our economies, are not also essential. The report outlines recent developments on NbS, with a focus on global, regional and national commitments, and key issues and concerns. Builds on the new multilaterally agreed definition of NbS agreed by the UN Environment Assembly in March 2022 to set out key elements in the concept, provides examples of NbS, and discusses related approaches. The report provides recommendations for actions by governments, civil society and the private sector to substantially scale up the use of NbS. The report aims to inform NbS-related initiatives and discussions on NbS at global, regional, and national levels, with a focus on how NbS can be scaled up to more effectively address social, economic and environmental challenges.