Organiser: The Wildlife Trusts
The Wildlife Trusts were one of the piloting organisations of the IUCN’s Nature-based Solutions standard and are among a group of NGOs leading a landscape-scale shift in UK conservation towards programmes that champion multiple benefits to people; tackling climate change, addressing health and wellbeing, regulating water flows, and co-existing with nature-friendly farming. This multi-benefit ethos is at the heart of the NbS standard.
This session will focus on how we are implementing the standard in practice and how other parties can draw parallels from this approach with other NbS programmes across Europe. In 2022, we received the largest ever corporate donation to date in the UK for Nature-based Solutions, nearly £40 million from Aviva to restore rare temperate rainforest across the west of the UK. The programme was designed with the IUCN standard in mind and in the recognition that we’re facing a climate and ecological emergency. We need to move much faster in rolling out joined-up solutions at scale, while also avoiding greenwashing traps that will only slow us down. Our programme has biodiversity, carbon removal, adaptation and community wellbeing at its heart. Aviva will receive any carbon credits from the scheme, but this is not a transactional offset scheme; Aviva are investing in the full benefits of the rainforests. The restoration of these temperate rainforests meets the highest integrity criteria for carbon removal projects, and we are working closely with Aviva to encourage the use of this new model of working in other programmes and with wider stakeholders.
Resilience is equally important. As well as situating our scheme in one of the wettest areas of the country, we will use a wide variety of broadleaf species that exist in Atlantic rainforests, and do everything in our power to reduce the risk to the new woodlands from fire, disease and drought. We will model future changes to the climatic conditions for the chosen sites and think through how we can make our woodlands as resilient as possible to the increasingly extreme conditions they will need to cope with. We will measure the benefits that the new woodlands are providing to reduce extreme weather impacts in turn, such as extreme heat or flooding. We will work very closely with local communities, ensuring that the nature reserves that are created from this program are designed with people living and working in the local area, in line with how we manage our nature reserves across the UK. As part of this approach, we aim to increase opportunities for people in local communities to gain employment and will seek to make all sites accessible to the public. Rainforests will add considerably to the beauty and cultural heritage of the areas where they’re restored and do much to boost green tourism.
The two session themes are:
1. Innovative tools and standards
QUESTION: How will the IUCN tools support the implementation of future
actions, not only in relation with the knowledge they generate, but also in related
communication, decision making, awareness raising and other societal
activities?
2. Securing investments in nature
QUESTION: what actions are needed to help secure the investments needed to
achieve the targets?