INTRODUCTION: NATURE’S INVESTMENT FRONTIER 

Dear friends,

Biodiversity-based investment themes are suddenly in the spotlight, after years of feeling like a bit of an understudy to the carbon market. Given a ballooning finance gap for nature, and the obvious materiality of nature risk to business, there is renewed interest in economic instruments that can drive private investment toward interventions to avert biodiversity loss or restore degraded ecosystems, and in doing so generate attractive cash flows.

Hopes are high for new economic growth models based on restoration and regeneration—a whole “restoration economy,” with jobs that would be difficult to outsource, roboticize, or replace with AI (although new technology can certainly drive better results at scale). This is already happening in the United States, where ecological restoration now employs more people than coal mining.

It’s a future worth pursuing. The current capitalist economic system is one of the most powerful human achievements. Without it, our modern world wouldn’t exist. But it has a potentially fatal flaw: it’s blind to the older operating system that runs life on Earth—the interconnected web of living systems in forests, coral reefs, wetlands, and all ecosystems. This “NatureOS” makes life possible. Yet, unless nature’s products become “natural resources” (wood, food, minerals), our “EconomyOS” doesn’t consider them valuable.

This report offers some perspectives from experts in biodiversity and nature finance on what the forward path looks like to reconnect these systems, and specifically to drive more private investment into nature and biodiversity. It begins with a look back on what we’ve learned. After all, these economic instruments have been around for decades. The first habitat credit banks appeared in the United States in the early 1980s.

There are sizeable opportunities on the horizon, connected to a wave of new infrastructure investment globally to expand that model to new geographies, as Mariana Sarmiento, Charles Bedford, and Dr. Timothy Male argue. But a reality check is due on what is likely to really attract demand, Ben Guillon and I argue. A “Field of Dreams” mentality (“If you build it, they will come”) is likely to get entrepreneurs in trouble.

On the demand side, biodiversity credits and other conservation assets offer a path to not simply fix the damage, but go “nature positive” by creating more nature than there was before. These ambitions need to be grounded in the mitigation hierarchy, or credits could be used for greenwashing, warn Martine Maron, Fabien Quétier, and Amrei von Hase.

Biodiversity might lend itself well to being “stacked” with or “stapled on” to other investments in carbon and value chains. Julia McCarthy and Ryan Sarsfield (“Beetles in a pay stack,” page 33) offer a useful framework for thinking about how to do this effectively.

This report is ultimately a set of perspectives from people with a collective century’s worth of experience in biodiversity markets. It offers no “silver bullet” solutions, and you may not agree with all of it; I doubt all of the authors agree with one another on some of the issues raised. We hope you’ll find it thought-provoking, and more importantly, useful in doing good work. A special thanks to Ecosystem Marketplace’s Advisory Group (Ricardo Bayon, Kate Hamilton, Yuejia Peng, and David Tepper) for their support on this work.

Michael Jenkins and Genevieve Bennett

THE MITIGATION HIERARCHY

When a development project is likely to have negative impacts on biodiversity, project designers and regulators can follow these steps to avoid, minimize, and rehabilitate negative impacts, and then offset or compensate for any remaining damage. Although development projects with net-negative impacts to biodiversity might still be approved if there is overriding public interest, the idea is to divert development from places that are more biologically valuable and encourage development in places where impacts are relatively low.

Offsets should be used only as a last resort. They refer to actions taken to compensate for quantified residual adverse impacts to species, habitat quality, ecological function, and/or ecosystem services that cannot be avoided, minimized, and/or rehabilitated. Offsets might take the form of restoration of degraded ecosystems, creation of new ecosystems or habitats, or protecting existing high-quality ecosystems at risk of degradation or loss (also known as an “averted risk” approach).

Like offsets, credits are a measurable unit of biodiversity outcome which is both durable and additional. However, they refer to purely positive outcomes: there is no explicit connection to a negative impact somewhere in the world requiring compensation. As a result, the equivalence (“like for like”) requirement we find in biodiversity offsetting best practices doesn’t apply. Credits should enter the picture only in the context of the process the mitigation hierarchy sets out.

I am proud to share with you our 2024 Impact Report. In it, you can read about the “Rainbow of Solutions” we’re building for climate, including achievements this past year, stories of change, progress, and some hope for the future.

I find myself reflecting on the journey we’ve been on over the last 25 years at Forest Trends. In some ways, Forest Trends and the community have made great progress. Just last week, for instance, I returned from Baja California, Mexico, where we with our Peruvian project partners met with representatives of the public, private, and civil society sectors of the Baja States to discuss lessons from Peru that can be mirrored or scaled in other countries facing water crises, like Mexico. This South-to-South exchange really worked and shows the way to a true global transformation when it comes to water security.

In other ways, we are still boxed into an economic system that puts us on a dead-end path — extracting natural resources like there’s no tomorrow, taking faster than natural resources can be replenished, and leaving little for future generations who will also depend on a healthy planet. We need to shift to a new way of doing things. When it comes to the economy and nature, the relationship needs to shift to one of synergy, not extraction.

We know how to do this. We’ve spent the last 25 years experimenting and demonstrating, building a global network, and sharing models that align economies with the power of nature to address the daunting challenges of climate change, water shortages, and the staggering loss of biodiversity. Now more than ever, our mission remains clear and increasingly important. Our approach of building coalitions of unusual actors, from communities to businesses to civil society and governments, is again validated in these politically unstable times.

Addressing climate change is both a sprint and a marathon, especially now. I like to think about this moment in time like the Tour de France race — a most famous test of endurance and determination. During the race, the hardest part is a grueling, uphill climb in the mountains. In 2024, we’ve reached this part of the race. But that does not call for despair. Now is the time to keep peddling, to double and triple down on our efforts, and to take advantage of the many incredible opportunities we do have to make real progress on climate change. Only then will we make it out of the mountains.

I am thrilled by all Forest Trends achieved in 2024. I am even more energized by what we can all do together in 2025 to grow and expand the rainbow of solutions we have at our disposal to address the climate crisis. Delay is not an option. What we have seen over and over in the course of 25 years is that when we build up and respect the real value of nature — where the default relationship is synergy, not extraction — we are all better off. The next several years give us a chance for economic/nature alignment at a scale not possible until now. We need to make the most of this opportunity. This work matters now more than ever.

Wishing you all well this holiday season and New Year,

Michael

INTRODUCTION

Greetings! I’ve just returned from back-to-back meetings of the Katoomba Group and the Nature Positive Summit, hosted by the Australian government. I wanted to share with you all some of what I saw and heard.

This was the 28th meeting of the Katoomba Group, an international working group led by Forest Trends that brings together an unusual group of leaders to solve the hard problems in driving value to nature. Katoomba events have been catalytic in the development of the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund, Mexico’s national payments for ecosystem services fund, and Peru’s natural infrastructure water tariff — all flagship models in creative finance for nature.

We chose to return this year to Katoomba, Australia – where it all began 25 years ago – in large part because of the Nature Positive Summit that immediately followed our meeting: an important opportunity to help steer the global agenda for nature. I think we’re in a very unique window right now, which opened with the Nature Positive Summit and will continue with the biodiversity COP in Calí, climate negotiations next year in Belem, Brazil, and a (to be officially confirmed) COP31 in 2026 hosted by Australia and Pacific nations. All of these countries have high interest in putting nature in the center of climate action. Add to this the Brazil G20 Presidency’s focus on bioeconomy, which I hope will be carried forward by South Africa and the USA when they assume G20 Presidencies in 2025, and 2026, and we have the making of a major opportunity to drive changes that put a real economic engine behind nature restoration and protection.

What should be on that agenda? Katoomba Group participants have put forward a set of core principles for a transition to a nature-positive economy. We’ve also identified a number of initiatives we’ll be driving forward in the coming months and years together. Below, we share a report-out video, agenda, and recording of our meeting at the Taronga Zoo.

Most importantly, I encourage you to get involved. You can learn more about the Katoomba Group at its website. You can also join our LinkedIn group for updates and to network with other members. We are already planning our next gathering, leading into COP 30 in Brazil. I hope to see many of you there.

– Michael

Katoomba Group Statement to the Global Nature Positive Summit

Following the gatherings, the Katoomba Group released a statement to the Global Nature Positive Summit, held in Australia from October 8-10. The statement lays out key messages from the gatherings, commitments made by the Group, and a call to action for the Summit.

In a video created at the Katoomba gathering, participants discuss the significance of this global gathering, the collective action that is needed to build more value into nature, and how to get involved in this work.

Twenty-five years ago, a new NGO called Forest Trends brought together a small international group to the town of Katoomba to brainstorm over increasing capital flows to protect nature, how to “make trees worth more standing than cut down.” Earlier this month, the group returned to Katoomba to celebrate its 25th anniversary and reflect on the past, present, and future of realizing value in nature. In the first in a series of blog posts, FT Fellow Jim Salzman shares insights from the meeting’s three days of discussion.

INTRODUCTION: DRIVING VALUE TO NATURE 

As Forest Trends approaches 25 years of work on conservation finance, I find myself reflecting not only on what we’ve accomplished in this year alone, but also how far we’ve come together over the past few decades. During this time, we’ve seen immense progress in harnessing market-based instruments to get us closer to meeting global climate and biodiversity goals, from carbon and biodiversity markets, REDD+ and other payments for ecosystem services, natural infrastructure investments, and more. (If you’re interested in taking a deeper dive, we’ve just published a paper detailing past challenges and future opportunities for scaling finance for tropical forest conservation.)

But even more importantly, there is a lot of work left to be done and we must think about where we’re headed next. In 2025, there are critical elections across the globe. There are key climate target deadlines and regulations like the EU’s Deforestation Regulation are on the horizon. Next year also marks only five years left to meet 2030 global climate goals – a glaring wakeup call. I am energized by the momentum leading up to the first Amazon climate COP in Brazil in 2025. With the track record and political will from Brazil’s new administration, this COP has potential to make tremendous strides toward strengthening indigenous rights and environmental conservation.

I see this moment we’re in as a critical window of political will and opportunity to drive more value to nature – one of the most important climate strategies we have. At Forest Trends, our strategy is focused on taking stock of how far we’ve come and making sure those learnings help us map out where we need to go to fully integrate nature into the global economy.

Central to this strategy is the upcoming 25^th anniversary gathering of The Katoomba Group. Since its founding, The Katoomba Group has been a key force in developing new paths forward for finance for nature. This upcoming meeting is particularly special to me, as it will take place at the location of the group’s first meeting in Katoomba, Australia in 1999. It is also an opportunity to lay the groundwork for discussions at upcoming global events such as the Australian Government’s Global Nature Positive Summit, the biodiversity COP in Colombia next month, the Belém Brazil COP at the end of 2025, and the COP 31 back in Australia – all governments that see the tremendous potential for investments in nature to address the urgent climate and biodiversity challenges.

Ahead of Katoomba, our team is gathering in New York City for Climate Week NYC. We’re excited to host and participate in numerous events that will map out and bring together the matrix of market tools at play that we need in our toolbox to put an economic engine behind conservation. A selection of Forest Trends events at Climate Week is available below.

For anyone interested in connecting in New York, we would love to hear from you, and I look forward to sharing insights and conversations from New York and Katoomba soon.

Michael

Reversing the global trend of tropical forest loss remains the largest barrier for nature climate solutions’ contributing to climate goals at their fullest potential. In the past three decades, there has been immense progress in developing market-based mechanisms and payments for a range ecosystem services and values. Despite progress, many of these approaches struggle to scale. This paper looks at past challenges and future “pathways to value” for scaling finance to end tropical deforestation and restore degraded forests.

Private Film Screening: “We Are Guardians”
5:00 – 8:30 PM EST
Angelika Film Center & CafeFeaturing: Beto Borges, Director of the Communities and Territorial Governance Initiative

New forest carbon standards and monitoring technologies – solutions out of the VCM crisis? 
7:30 – 9:30 AM EST
The Westin New York at Times Square

Featuring: Mike Korchinsky, Forest Trends Fellow & Founder of Wildlife Works

Financing the Green Transition
8:00 AM – 11:00 AM EST
Deloitte Hub

Featuring: Gena Gammie, Director of the Global Water Initiative & Art Blundell, Sr. Advisor on Forest Finance & Governance

Nature: Making the Priceless Valuable
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Ethic and Virtual

Featuring: Genevieve Bennett, Director of Communications & Strategic Outreach & Charlotte Barber, Associate Director of Ecosystem Marketplace

No smallholders left behind: Empowering livelihoods & action through climate finance 
8:00 – 9:30 AM EST
Metlife Building

Featuring: Michael Jenkins, Founding President & CEO

Nature: Making the Priceless Valuable – Round two!
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EST
REGISTER

Featuring: Genevieve Bennett, Director of Communications & Strategic Outreach & Charlotte Barber, Associate Director of Ecosystem Marketplace

Nature: Making the Priceless Valuable – Round three!
9:00 – 10:30 AM EST
REGISTER

Featuring: Genevieve Bennett, Director of Communications & Strategic Outreach & Charlotte Barber, Associate Director of Ecosystem Marketplace

INTRODUCTION: A MARKET IN TRANSITION

On May 31^st, we released our annual State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report, against a backdrop of some very important developments in the carbon market. Within the span of two weeks, the White House released new Principles for High-integrity Voluntary Carbon Markets. The Symbiosis Coalition made an advance market commitment for up to 20 million tons of nature-based carbon removal credits by 2030. And then the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (ICVCM) announced its approval of the first seven carbon credit methodologies that meet its high-integrity standards (known as the Core Carbon Principles).

These events arrive after a challenging year in many ways for the voluntary carbon market. Our global analysis finds that market transaction value dropped 61 percent year-on-year, driven by a fall in transactions for REDD+ and renewable energy (which make up the majority of the market).

The data show us a market in transition, as important integrity guardrails are being put into place. In many ways, 2023 was a year spent in limbo, as buyers waited for the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles, VCMI Claims Code, and Verra consolidated REDD methodology to come into operation. In the first six months of 2024, we’re already seeing signs of both stabilizing prices and strong future demand, such as the Symbiosis announcement and new Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements signed for jurisdictional REDD+ credits from Ghana and Costa Rica.

A year’s worth of market data allows us to see nuance in the numbers. For example, the finding of credit transactions declining reflects more complicated dynamics than a simple demand contraction – including a drop in speculative trading, and some buyers stepping back after over-purchasing in previous years. Meanwhile, our data on credit retirements and project registrations (particularly for nature-based projects) in 2023 show a different trend: one of long-term supply and demand remaining robust. That “big picture” overview is one of the benefits of these reports.

We’re also tracking the rollout of Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement on carbon trading mechanisms. Significant uncertainty remains around Article 6 implementation, how it will interact with the voluntary carbon market, and how countries should be thinking about their national A6 strategies. The world is at a pivotal moment for ensuring success of the Paris Agreement targets. And yet I don’t see the necessary infrastructure for data-sharing and decision-making in place, so that countries can design strategies around their Nationally Determined Commitments as effectively as possible. We need to build that, quickly.

Most troublingly, the report shows that a substantial amount of private finance to forest- and nature-based climate solutions, particularly in the Global South, evaporated last year. Transactions for nature-based credits plummeted by nearly 70%, from $1.1B to $351M. So, some $750 million of climate finance did not flow to tropical forests last year. Some Projects in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, where the majority of these projects are located, bore the brunt of that fall – an unintendedly broad consequence, perhaps, of heavy recent scrutiny of certain projects and methodologies.

In this Dispatch, we’ll cover some findings of the State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report, and are also pleased to share some insights and reactions to the report’s findings from experts in the field. We enjoy our role in helping to host the conversation around market direction and design, and we are grateful to all of you for taking part in it.

Michael Jenkins

A new report by Ecosystem Marketplace, On the Path to Maturity: State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2024, provides a comprehensive overview of the global supply and demand of voluntary carbon credits in 2023. The report highlights that despite an overall market contraction, there is an increasingly complex landscape within the voluntary carbon market (VCM). A few key findings are below.

HOW CARBON MARKETS CAN SERVE AS A CATALYST TO A LOW-CARBON, GREEN ECONOMY 

WITHOUT PROJECTS, JURISDICTIONAL REDD+ PROGRAMS RISK BECOMING ‘PAPER PARKS’ 

GROWING PAINS OF A BURGEONING MARKET 

INTRODUCTION: A HOPEFUL STORY ABOUT WATER

Some of the biggest news stories recently have revolved around water. Often too much water, in the form of catastrophic flooding, sometimes too little in the form of droughts. Water is “the face of climate change,” the most tangible area where people tend to initially see and feel its impacts, as weather patterns and water availability become increasingly irregular.

I want to kick off this Resilience Dispatch by sharing a more encouraging story about water: one about how transformational change for resilience is possible—through partnerships and persistence.

Last month, Peru’s National Water Authority approved a new protocol for how water rights are assigned. Historically, 70 percent of water rights went to men in Peru, limiting women’s access to water resources and shutting them out from decision-making spaces. This new protocol ensures that for water rights assigned to a person who is married or with a long-term partner, both names are included on the right. This means that more women will have access to water rights and be able to participate in spaces like water councils, boards, and committees that decide how water is managed, including how nature is part of that management.

This transformational shift is a direct result of our work with Peruvian institutions to increase gender equality in water management—a key ingredient for increasing resilience—through the Natural Infrastructure for Water Security (NIWS) project.

Through the NIWS project, supported by USAID and Canada, Forest Trends and our partners have been working since 2017 to scale up investments in projects that use nature to strengthen water security and climate resilience in Peru. Our new publication, Journey towards Water Security, shares the main results of this collaborative work to date, which includes developing a portfolio of over 80 natural infrastructure projects (like this one) valued at over US$370 million with local funders and over 240 local communities.

While the NIWS project’s journey has many results to share, we think one of the most important lessons is how those results were achieved: through relationships, between institutions that have not worked together, sectors that have been siloed, and communities that have not been connected in Peru.

Peru’s new water rights protocol, for example, was the result of building relationships with ten different leaders of Peru’s National Water Authority over the past six years. We achieve impact by supporting champions of nature-based solutions, institutional change, and technical capacity, while remaining nimble enough to act on windows of opportunity in Peru’s rapidly changing political environment. Peru offers some important lessons for other countries trying to make their water and infrastructure sectors more resilient in these times of climate and political instability.

In January, we celebrated the extension of NIWS through 2027 with USAID, Canada, and our Peruvian partners. Today, we celebrate women in Peru having the rights they need to play their vital role in water and climate resilience in Peru.

Best,

Michael

A new report by the Natural Infrastructure for Water Security project, Journey towards Water Security, summarizes the impressive accomplishments of the project and its partners from 2017 through September 2023. It outlines NIWS’ unique approach that has helped Peru reach over US$370 million in investments in natural infrastructure. A few main takeaways are below.

A LOOK AT HOW WOMEN ARE TRANSFORMING WATER MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP IN PERU 

Twenty-three women leaders in water governance from 12 Peruvian regions recently gathered in Arequipa, Peru for a meeting on “Women Transforming Water Management,” organized by Forest Trends with Peruvian partners CEDEPAS Norte, Desco, Descosur, Chaski Q’enti, and CONDESAN, and with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Canada, and the D. N. Batten Foundation. A video from the event is below.

At nearly 14,000 feet above sea level in the mountains of southern Peru, people in the San Juan de Tarucani district in the Arequipa region are facing a water crisis. Wetlands and lagoons in the area are usually replenished during the rainy season (December through March), but in the face of lower rainfall associated with climate change, these critical water sources are drying up. And this doesn’t only affect people in San Juan de Tarucani; the community is near the head of the Chili River, which supplies drinking water to the over one million inhabitants of the city of Arequipa.

While water scarcity can be a source of division, it can also be an opportunity to come together. Some regions in Peru have been discovering the power of water as a way to unite and show up to the problem-solving table a little differently. Seeing water as a collective responsibility, rather than simply a “water utility problem,” opens the door for diverse perspectives and buy-in from other sectors – collaborations every country will need to navigate water crises in a changing climate. With support from Forest Trends and our partners, people in the Arequipa region were supported to build such a coalition and recognize their shared dependence on a dwindling resource.

I am very proud to share with you our 2023 Impact Report. In it, you can read about our achievements this past year, stories of change, progress, and hope for the future.

Forest Trends was founded with the mission of putting an economic engine behind nature conservation – the idea being that our economy, our society, and our wellbeing all depend in very real and material ways on healthy natural ecosystems.

Climate change, forest loss, the biodiversity crisis, the sustainable development imperative: none of these can be fixed through business as usual. None of these challenges will be addressed by individuals, individual institutions, or individual countries. It will take all of us together.

This is why we spend so much time investing in people and in relationships. The magic of coalitions lies in what each of us brings with us. We need to invest in a rich set of relationships, including with leaders who haven’t historically been given a seat at the table.

Forest Trends is, by design, a small organization. This forces us to work with partners and through coalitions. It means we can’t afford to be sharp-elbowed or close-minded. We’re designed that way because we believe that is how we are going to achieve real, sustained results. This Impact Report includes updates on a few of our evolving initiatives built on this model. Coalition-building can be hard, but it works, and it is what we will continue to focus on in the years ahead.

Reflecting on what lies ahead in 2024 and in this most critical decade for climate, I think it’s also important to keep reminding ourselves where we are on the path. It is up to us to shape these innovative approaches and deliver real results for people and the planet. At Forest Trends, we take that responsibility seriously.

There are no foregone conclusions; we all are the builders of how human civilization is going to respond to the climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development challenges. If we want them to, markets can finally benefit poor people and nature, which they’ve never done before.

The years ahead are going to ask a lot of us all, but I am incredibly proud of the work we’ve done together this year. Forest Trends will continue to stand up for climate, for our partners (and especially the indigenous and rural communities so often caught on the front lines), and for the future. We hope you will join us in both the work and the celebrations of successes.

Wishing you and your loved ones a great deal of joy this holiday season and in the New Year!

Michael

Water, water, simultaneously everywhere and nowhere on the global agenda

This month, Group of Seven (G7) energy and environment ministers met in Sapporo, Japan to haggle over climate targets. Most current media coverage of the G7 is on a possible near-total G7 export ban to Russia, not the environmental talks. Fair enough. But something small caught my attention in the environment ministers’ communiqué. They talk about the “triple global crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.” Water is at once notably absent and universally present in that framing.

Of course where your electricity will come from in 2050 matters. But when you think about how climate change will be directly experienced – is already being experienced – it is through water: droughts, floods and landslides, pollution, wildfires, food insecurity, rising seas, public health, gender inequality, and so on.

Water is truly the face of climate change for most of us, and yet it so often feels like a second-tier issue on the global agenda. The UN Water Conference in New York at the end of March was the first time in 46 years the UN has actually held a conference on water, which is pretty unbelievable.

The country of Peru has become a world leader in public investment in nature-based solutions for water and climate security. Like water, Peru flies under the radar somewhat when it comes to the climate change agenda – but what’s happening there represents an incredible paradigm shift. Peru’s success lies in shifting the system that surrounds decisions about infrastructure investment: avoiding the trap of standing up a few nature-based demonstration projects with limited ability to scale, Peru is deeply changing the way key institutions understand risk and approach infrastructure planning across government agency silos. And in changing the faces of those institutions themselves, by hiring more women and centering gender equality as fundamental to water security.

Peru’s success is also thanks to policy innovations that often appeared small at the time but have powerful implications, such as a short provision included in the 2015 Modernization of Sanitation Services Law that water utilities should invest in watershed conservation, or tweaking the rules for post-disaster expedited public funding to include ecosystems.

The result is now more than a quarter billion dollars committed to new investment in natural infrastructure for water in Peru in less than five years.

Systems change and sneak attacks – this is how we need to work. We were in great company at the Nature Hub during the UN Climate Conference in New York City in March. The lessons shared in New York are captured in a new article on our website and excerpted below. And stay tuned for a new report series coming this spring on what the world can learn from Peru.  We want to make sure the lessons we’re learning on this journey to mainstream natural infrastructure investments are reaching people who can use them.

Be well,

– Michael Jenkins

Coming soon! Lessons Learned in Scaling Natural Infrastructure in Peru

Our Water Initiative team is producing a series of reports, Lessons Learned in Scaling Natural Infrastructure in Peru, to share barriers, how they were overcome, and how they are mainstreaming and implementing publicly funded nature-based solutions across the country. Subscribe below for updates on report release this spring!

Seven Lessons for Scaling up Nature-based Solutions for Water Security: Takeaways from the First UN Water Conference in 46 Years

Last month we were honored to gather experts and practitioners at the Nature Hub in New York City during the UN Water Conference – the first in 46 years – to share lessons learned on scaling up nature-based solutions (NBS) for water. The main aim of the conference this year was to accelerate action to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Ensure access to clean water and sanitation for all by 2030. The Nature Hub, located a short walk from UN Headquarters, aimed to ensure that nature was considered as part of the UN’s agenda and to gather practitioners of NBS to share their experiences (co-hosted by Forest Trends, The Nature Conservancy, WWF, IUCN, World Water Council, International Water Management Institute, International Network of Basin Organizers). As co-hosts and organizers of two events, we were proud to help elevate NBS on a global stage.

While there are many successful cases of NBS, experience is limited when it comes to bringing these solutions to scale, which we will need to meet global climate goals. Matching the scale of NBS’ potential to support water security with action on the ground will require a new set of strategies on policy, finance, and implementation. Fortunately, early adopters are starting to generate valuable lessons for scaling up NBS for water security. Peru has made particularly remarkable progress, with a 12x increase in NBS investments implemented over the last decade.

Our speakers last week shared their most important takeaways from their experiences implementing nature-based solutions around the world, which we have combined here with our own from Peru:

Read the full blog post.