Nature-based solutions: Opportunities and challenges for scaling up

This report aims to inform Nature-based Solutions (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. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) 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.

Recommendations from this report for actions by governments, civil society and the private sector to substantially scale up the use of NbS include:

• Developing a common understanding of NbS and the benefits they can bring.
•  Fully and transparently addressing concerns and questions about the integrity of NbS.
• Understanding the potential synergies and trade-offs associated with NbS.
• Substantially scaling up deployment and implementation of these solutions.