For decades, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has carried out innovative conservation initiatives that have simultaneously helped protect, manage, and restore the environment while delivering tangible and sustainable benefits for people. This type of approach is now widely known as Nature-based Solutions (NbS).
According to this guidance, NbS could provide around 30% of the cost-effective mitigation needed by 2030 to stabilise warming to below 2°C. Also, NbS can provide a powerful defence against the impacts and long-term hazards of climate change, which is the biggest threat to biodiversity. As NbS enters into policy and is adopted by projects on the ground, there is a pressing need for greater clarity and precision of what the concept entails and what is required for it to be deployed successfully.
This standard guidance provides a systematic learning framework so that lessons can improve and evolve the applications, leading to greater confidence in NbS among decision makers. Therefore, the standard provides a global framework for the design, verification, and scaling up of Nature-based Solutions. This guidance includes globally consistent 8 criteria and indicators, which are supported by the Principles for Nature-based Solutions, to measure the strength of interventions.
The 8 criteria are as follows: