Revival of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in 2025

Nature-based Solutions (NbS)–actions that protect, restore and sustainably manage ecosystems to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and community resilience–have moved from hopeful concept to practical policy instrument in 2025. The year’s defining moment was the launch of the Second Edition of the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, a technical and political push that signals NbS are being taken far more seriously by policymakers, funders and practitioners.

What makes the Second Edition consequential is not only cosmetic updating but a substantive shift in approach. The revised Standard abandons a checklist mentality in favour of systems thinking, explicitly linking ecological health, social equity and economic feasibility, and embeds stronger safeguards, grievance mechanisms and rights for indigenous people and local communities. That reorientation matters: it tackles the two criticisms that have dogged NbS at scale – weak safeguards and the risk of delivering nature wins for some while imposing costs on others.

2025 also saw an amplification of policy and investment narratives around NbS. Thought leaders and commentators framed NbS as dual-purpose tools that deliver climate mitigation and adaptation while generating public-health and livelihoods dividends, an argument that is increasingly attractive to treasury officials and private investors searching for co-benefit projects. Prominent analyses this autumn argued for NbS as a coherent policy and investment framework, stressing that scaling will require clearer metrics, bankable project pipelines and blended finance instruments.

Yet the revival is pragmatic, not celebratory. The community of practice has grown more candid about limitations: NbS cannot be a substitute for rapid emissions reductions in energy and transport; durability and permanence of benefits are uneven; and project finance remains embryonic in many jurisdictions. These honest appraisals have driven technical work in 2025 from improved monitoring approaches to revised standards for social safeguards, the aim to make investments more credible and less risky for corporate and sovereign financiers.

Finance remains the crucial bottleneck. For NbS to scale to the levels sometimes quoted in headline estimates, hundreds of billions annually, they must become investable at institutional scale. That requires a standardised, transparent metrics for carbon, biodiversity and ecosystem services; reliable long-term revenue streams; and instruments that de-risk early-stage projects for private capital. 2025 saw experimentation, from pilot biodiversity credit protocols to sovereign-backed blended facilities, but the message was clear: policy and finance must be coordinated if NbS are to move beyond boutique projects.

Another critical advance in 2025 was the mainstreaming of rights and participation. The revised IUCN Standard places indigenous people and local communities at the centre of decision-making, elevating consent, benefit-sharing and grievance redress from optional considerations to core requirements. That repositioning reflects growing evidence that NbS that ignore local governance are fragile and often fail to deliver promised social or ecological outcomes. Embedding rights is both ethical and pragmatic: projects with secure local consent are more likely to persist, adapt and deliver measurable benefits.

Looking forward, three themes will determine whether 2026 consolidates the gains of 2025 or lets momentum stall:

1. Metrics and credibility: Investors will move only when measurement of climate and biodiversity outcomes is rigorous and auditable. The Second Edition helps, but operationalising its guidance into bankable project templates is the next step.

2. Blended finance and public guarantees: Early-stage support and guarantees are essential to bridge the risk-return gap. Pilots in blended instruments must be accelerated and standardised.

3. Policy coherence: NbS must be integrated across climate, agriculture, water and infrastructure planning so that incentives align at national and subnational levels, only then will NbS escape project-by-project fragmentation.

For practitioners and policymakers, the prescription is straightforward: strengthen standards and safeguards, invest in measurement and data infrastructure, and design public finance tools that crowd in private capital without offloading social or ecological risk. Done well, NbS can deliver triple wins – climate resilience, biodiversity recovery and community livelihoods but done poorly they risk greenwashing or creating perverse incentives. The policy and investment choices made in 2026 will determine which path prevails.

In short, 2025 did not invent NbS but it did professionalise them. The IUCN’s updated Global Standard, growing debate on finance, and stronger emphasis on rights and monitoring mark a transition from hopeful experimentation to disciplined scaling. If the next year invests in credibility and the scaffolding that turns pilots into pipelines, Nature-based Solutions could finally become a practical pillar of climate, biodiversity and development strategies worldwide.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.

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