Nature Based Solution

  • January 20, 2023
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: DPN Topics
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Nature Based Solution

Subject: Environment

Section: Conservation

Context:

  • Nature-based solutions (NbS), a hotly debated concept, gained significant political traction throughout 2022, even as challenges and concerns over the failure to implement biodiversity and human rights safeguards in current and future NbS projects have increased among Indigenous peoples and NGOs.

About Nature based solutions:

  • In March 2022, the N. Environment Assembly (UNEA) passed a resolution adopting a multilaterally agreed-upon definition for NbS, describing it clearly as:

“Actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, which address social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being, ecosystem services and resilience and biodiversity benefits”.

  • For instance, the restoration and/or protection of mangroves along coastlines utilizes a Nature-based solution to accomplish several goals. Mangroves moderate the impact of waves and wind on coastal settlements or cities and sequester CO2. They also provide nursery zones for marine life that can be the basis for sustaining fisheries on which local populations may depend.
  • Recent global policy instruments have recognised NbS, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in December 2022.

Features of Nature-based Solutions:

  1. Embrace nature conservation norms (and principles);
  2. Can be implemented alone or in an integrated manner with other solutions to societal challenges (e.g. technological and engineering solutions);
  3. Are determined by site-specific natural and cultural contexts that include traditional, local and scientific knowledge;
  4. Produce societal benefits in a fair and equitable way, in a manner that promotes transparency and broad participation;
  5. Maintain biological and cultural diversity and the ability of ecosystems to evolve over time;
  6. Are applied at a landscape scale;
  7. Recognise and address the trade-offs between the production of a few immediate economic benefits for development, and future options for the production of the full range of ecosystems services; and
  8. Are an integral part of the overall design of policies, and measures or actions, to address a specific challenge.
Category of NbS ApproachesExamples
Ecosystem restoration approaches·        Ecological restoration

·        Ecological Engineering

·        Forest landscape restoration

Issue-specific ecosystem-related approaches·        Ecosystem-based adaptation

·        Ecosystem-based mitigation

·        Climate adaptation services

·        Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction

Infrastructure-related approaches·        Natural infrastructure

·        Green infrastructure

Ecosystem-based management approaches·        Integrated coastal zone management

·        Integrated water resources management

Ecosystem protection approaches·        Area-based conservation approaches, including protected area management

International Support for NBS:

  • NbS rose rapidly to prominence in the past year, it was included within the final cover decision of the COP27 U.N. climate summit held last November in Egypt
  • And figured notably in two targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at the COP15 U.N. biodiversity conference in December, held in Canada.
  • UNEA resolution also called on the N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) to support the implementation of nature-based solutions that safeguard the rights of communities and Indigenous peoples.

Concerns over NBS:

  • The potential for misuse and abuse of nature-based solutions as a greenwashing mechanism by businesses to offset their ongoing carbon emissions, but without curbing them, and as a market mechanism to commodify and put a price tag on nature.
  • Countries such as Bolivia and India fear that its inclusion in the CBD text, and its scaling up as a major policy, could pave the way for land grabs and the commodification of nature.
  • It is possible to misrepresent actions that may not be biodiversity friendly as complying with nature-based solutions. For example, promoting monocropping or single species plantation forestry can be marked as afforestation but may create more ecological and socio-cultural harm.

About Green-washing Mechanism: https://optimizeias.com/what-is-greenwashing/

Environment Nature Based Solution