Nature-based solutions: Policy options for climate biodiversity

As Nature-Based Climate Solutions are developed, there is an opportunity for a multi-pronged approach. Policy interventions can aim to enhance benefits beyond carbon, including biodiversity and other benefits such as climate resilience (i.e., building adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change) or local community development. Likewise, when biodiversity action is taken, there is an opportunity to better measure and optimize carbon benefits.

This paper Nature-based solutions: Policy options for climate biodiversity explores policy options for climate change mitigation in the land sector (i.e., the part of Canada’s land under economic management), including: 

• Direct public funding (e.g., Natural Climate Solutions Fund)
• Carbon offsets
• Regulations and pricing mechanisms

The paper demonstrates how the land sector’s unique characteristics require a more holistic approach to policy development under each of these models, one that considers both climate and biodiversity objectives simultaneously. The main argument of this paper is that today’s focus on using NCS to fight climate change risks undervaluing or ignoring the many other benefits the land sector can provide.

The paper points out that in part, this risk stems from the fact that most ecosystem services are “free” public goods and therefore not counted or measured in the same ways as other assets with clear market prices. The other ancillary benefits that nature provides could be overlooked as policies are developed that bring natural carbon storage and sequestration under explicit management (e.g., carbon offsets).

While aiming towards policymakers and other stakeholders interested in Nature-Based Climate Solutions (NCS), the paper describes potential policy tools that deliver GHG mitigation while also protecting or improving biodiversity indicators.