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SDG: 13 Climate action

Climate action

The Challenges

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have huge potential to support climate mitigation, adaptation, nature recovery, food security, rural economy and human wellbeing, but implementation is slow and patchy.

Some interventions are poor quality, leading to adverse impacts and undermining legitimacy and social support. These are due to a range of barriers, including a lack of high-level policy support and funding, patchy evidence on the benefits of NbS, cultural barriers, governance challenges, and knowledge gaps on how to maximise benefits while reducing trade-offs.

There is a need to illuminate these barriers and identify enabling factors that support the deployment of high quality NbS projects that put the right NbS in the right places, working with local communities to balance competing goals and harness synergies. To address this challenge, the Sprint team identified three key objectives, which were refined through co-creation with key stakeholders. The Sprint aimed to:  

  • Develop tools and guidance to support practitioners in engaging with local communities and other stakeholders, identifying funding, strategically planning the delivery of a network of high quality NbS at landscape scale, and monitoring the outcomes.
  • Model NbS potential at national scale, and provide key recommendations for policymakers on how to support effective NbS delivery.
  • Develop and promote a set of compelling case study stories to inform and inspire both practitioners and policymakers, showing how high quality NbS can be part of a transition to a more sustainable society.

The Solutions

The Sprint researchers created tools to support the planning, implementation and funding of NbS activities. To plug the gap in understanding of NbS governance, a Recipe for Engagement was developed as a best practice guide for practitioners to engage meaningfully with stakeholders and the public. This was complemented with a funding finder tool, and an open source software package to help people create opportunity maps for planning nature recovery and NbS at landscape scale for any area in England. These, along with case studies and guidance documents were incorporated into the Knowledge Hub, an interactive library of resources from Agile and other freely available sources to act as a one-stop-shop to inform the planning and implementation of NbS. Additionally, the Sprint capitalised on policy opportunities that arose during the Sprint with submissions of written evidence, policy and research briefs.

The Pathway

This Sprint brought together a large team of researchers from ecology, geology, natural resource governance, environmental science, environmental social science, and soil science. Regular ongoing co-creation with stakeholders was enhanced by sharing indicative findings from the various workstreams. Input and guidance from stakeholders in Defra, BBOWT, Defra, Environment Agency, Highlands Rewilding, National Trust, Natural England, NFU, RBG Kew, UK CEH, WWF, University of Aberdeen and others helped to shape the direction of research and the primary outputs based on identified needs. This enabled the development of a range of easy-to-use tools that facilitate planning, funding, implementation, governance and monitoring of NbS and nature recovery at local, regional and national levels of scale. Further research and outputs will be taken forward by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR). 

What happened next?

Co-creation with a range of stakeholders was key to producing tools and outputs for use at different levels. The Sprint used DEFRA’s input on barriers and enablers to NbS to guide the research trajectory and inform the generation of tools such as the Opportunity Maps that augment DEFRA’s land use strategy. It also capitalised on policy opportunities as they emerged, generating written evidence and policy briefs relating to the National Adaptation Plan, soil health, and blue carbon code for UK seagrass, all informed by and relevant to DEFRA.

The Challenges

There is a large mismatch between current climate ambition and climate policy implementation worldwide. In the Brazilian case, this policy gap usually drives the conversion of carbon rich biodiverse native ecosystems (the single largest source of emissions in the country) mainly for agricultural expansion.

Not only is this undermining the health and resilience of the Brazilian economy (for example, because ecosystem conversion compromises biodiversity, climate regulation, water supply and food security), it threatens the country’s international credibility (because it will prevent Brazil from meeting its climate and biodiversity pledges). Moreover, given that Brazil harbours >20% of the world’s species, ongoing ecosystem conversion threatens the integrity of the entire biosphere. Brazilian climate change policies have critical impacts both for Brazil and globally. 

This Sprint considered how to achieve a credible pathway to Net Zero for Brazil. It took place during the run up to the Brazilian general election in October 2022, inspired by the need to push the new administration to provide an ambitious NDC for Brazil, and to provide support on defining the Net Zero strategy, as well as input into COP27 negotiations in November 2022. This Sprint explored the mitigation potential of key nature-based and engineered solutions in Brazil’s net zero pathway under locally meaningful policy scenarios. 

The Solutions

Recommendations for policy makers: 

  • Increase ambition in Brazil’s climate pledges, aligning short and long-term goals.
  • Strengthen existing legislations such as the Forest Code during this decade and go beyond them to avoid large-scale reliance on costly engineered solutions to reach net-zero GHG emissions.
  • Enhance protection and restoration of Brazil’s native ecosystems, i.e. implement nature-based solutions.

The Pathway

This was a six-month science-to-policy Sprint which used Dr Soterroni’s existing land-use model for Brazil combined with another regional integrated assessment model from the Brazilian partner COPPE/UFRJ. These were used to demonstrate how different elements applied to this modeling approach covering all sectors of the economy would create an achievable and affordable net-zero pathway by around 2050. This pathway is regionally sensitive and would contribute to climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience as well as biodiversity conservation. Demonstrating the model and its findings to stakeholders in Brazil and the UK enabled ongoing engagement.

What happened next

Results and policy implications were published in a prestigious paper which is now in the top-ten of most downloaded Global Change Biology articles.

Following this publication Dr Soterroni was seconded into a technical and advisory role in the SINAPSE project (Simulador Nacional de Politicas Setoriais e Emissoes) at the Brazilian Ministry for Science, Technology and Innovation. Colleagues from the Ministry confirmed that Dr Soterroni’s research findings contributed to the development of impact projections with detailed representation of national policies in the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) sector under the SINAPSE MCTI framework. This is the Brazilian government’s official tool for projecting scenarios for the implementation of sectoral public policies and estimating potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, to achieve Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets.

Dr Soterroni’s contributions contributed to the development of version 2.0 of the tool, and the next cycle of Brazil’s NDCs to the UNFCCC and the Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS).