Nature-based Solutions and the role of nature have increasingly gained momentum within the climate space, most recently acknowledged and adopted at international conventions such as the UNFCCC COP 27 and the CBD COP15. The ideas that “Nature-based Solutions” presents, about addressing social challenges with nature and living with and alongside the non-human natural world have been in practice from the beginning of time. If grounded in rights-based approaches and strict social and environmental safeguards, NbS have great potential to contribute to ecosystem resilience. However, the term “NbS” is vulnerable to greenwashings, and the many examples of bad-faith actors co-opting “NbS” in order to continue with the unsustainable, unjust status-quo have made it a complex and often fraught term to engage with (see our NbS Information Brief for a fuller view of the opportunities and risks that NbS presents).
The Nature-climate movement
To this end, Intact ecosystems are necessary to provide the associated ecosystem services relevant for human survival and existence, speaking to the potential of nature to thrive and sustain human well-being. Similarly, climate resilient landscapes are necessary to ensure people and nature thrive. It is thus paramount that nature-climate interactions are interlinked, and once taken into consideration as a whole have the potential to sustain human socio-economic livelihoods. Despite this, the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change are often treated in silos, with less acknowledgement of the interconnectedness between the two as coupled with the urgency of joint action on the same.
The Series; Demystifying Nature based Solutions and the Nature-climate movement
The Series builds up from the ongoing work of Youth4Nature in advancing the role of Nature in addressing the climate crisis, while advocating for local and practical solutions for nature-based solutions with several youth from around the World in the lead up to the UNFCCC COP28 and beyond. Grounded in the Nature-based Solutions Global Youth Position Statement, the series also looks to cite, through storytelling the role youth are already taking on with just approaches of NbS in practice across distinct landscapes within their local communities.
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