Investments in coastal Nature-based Solutions: Opportunities for national and local governments

This report provides an overview of the topical challenges and explores options for addressing regulatory and governance issues as barriers to Nature-based Solutions implementation. Coastal or ‘blue’ NbS includes the conservation and/or restoration of coastal wetlands such as mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrass beds, which contain some of the largest carbon stocks per unit area and provide extensive carbon sequestration. Such blue NbS are also effective in the protection of coastal communities from climate change, while providing a multitude of local and global ecosystem services,

The report highlights the importance of protecting coastal communities, as even under global temperatures rise limited to 2°C, by 2050 at least 570 cities and some 800 million people will be impacted by rising seas and storm surges. It further explains how public and private sector investments can be combined to promote and enable sustainable growth and to strengthen mitigation and adaptation capacity and action. Success depends on an adequate interaction among stakeholders, the careful gauging of synergies between investment, environment and climate protection, and the mainstreaming of policy areas including tax, trade, planning and labour policies.