Reflections on nature-based solutions at COP27: innovation, policies, and partnerships

By Emily Dahl

At the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Egypt, COP27, while negotiators have been trying to come to consensus around vital issues of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance, much of the “implementation” side of this so-named “Implementation COP” has been on display outside of the negotiation rooms at the side events throughout the venue in Sharm el Sheikh. My main focus at the COP as part of the Tufts / Fletcher delegation was to see what progress has been made since COP26 in Glasgow on nature-based solutions (NbS), and how governments, development banks, the private sector, NGOs, community-led groups, and others are translating commitments into action. I wanted to understand more about how NbS are contributing toward Paris Agreement targets, and what still needs to be done to scale and finance these types of initiatives.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres and President of Ghana Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at a COP27 Leaders’ Event on Accelerating Adaptation in Africa.

Several themes emerged as I attended more than a dozen sessions on NbS during the first week of the conference, with topics ranging from indigenous-led efforts, to national-level actions—such as The Nature Conservancy’s “blue bonds” debt-for-nature deal in Barbados to convert sovereign debt into marine conservation or Guyana’s development of a carbon market for high-integrity credits from additional forest conservation, with Norway as a buyer of those credits. Leadership by local and indigenous communities in developing place-based solutions; government acknowledgement of and investment in conservation as part of the climate change mitigation picture; and multilateral or bilateral collaboration among public, private, and philanthropic or nongovernmental organizations all surfaced repeatedly as keys to successful efforts.

I was also interested in how promising new initiatives, such as Conservation International’s “Exponential Roadmap for Natural Climate Solutions”—incorporating the concept for a revitalized “Carbon Law for Nature” first proposed in 2017—can play a role in catalyzing additional action. The Roadmap lays out a people-focused approach in which those living, working on, and stewarding the land interact with and are supported by enabling actors in policy, business, finance, and social movements. This initiative and other action plans can be complemented by technological advances, like the new open-data platform, Climate TRACE, that former Vice President Al Gore debuted at the COP. Climate TRACE deploys AI and machine learning for direct observation and analysis of emissions-causing activities to develop emissions databases for sectors including agriculture, forestry, and land use. While it’s unclear whether these specific initiatives would interact, it will be interesting to see what new collaborations are catalyzed by announcements made in Sharm El Sheikh.

Ricardo Marshall, Director of the Roofs to Reefs Programme in the Barbados Prime Minister’s Office, speaks during a panel on Putting Innovative Sustainable Finance to Work convened by The Nature Conservancy.

I came away from the conference with a better understanding of the challenges stakeholders are trying to overcome when preserving and restoring nature to help meet Paris Agreement targets. For indigenous people to effectively maintain their central role in deploying traditional knowledge for the benefit of ecosystems and climate change mitigation, they need to secure legal recognition and land rights. For communities and national governments to embark on innovative initiatives, they need to cultivate supportive policy environments and, though some have achieved internally driven successes through budget allocations and other measures, they most often look to partners to finance implementation.

Overall, I was struck by just how much activity is underway in this area and many others such as green growth and the net-zero energy transition—and how these side events relate to the negotiations on mitigation and loss & damage. As media outlets are currently reporting, progress at this year’s COP is frustratingly slow, and the world’s overall trajectory toward meeting Paris Agreement targets and containing global average temperature rise needs a major boost in terms of public and private finance, especially in directing financial flows to developing nations. But the Paris Agreement is serving one of its purposes: nations and a wide variety of actors are developing, implementing, and sharing their climate initiatives to reaffirm and enhance their commitments while inspiring others to increase their ambition.

Emily Dahl is a current MGA (F23) student at The Fletcher School. This is the second blog post in the COP27 delegation blog series.