The Public Finance Initiative is exploring a new body of research taking a critical look at Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Natural Capital (NC). Our focus is on examining how these powerful yet contested concepts are actually being put into practice. Despite their growing prominence in climate discourse, there is little agreement among experts and practitioners on what Nbs and NC terms truly mean or how they should be applied in strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation.
To understand emerging concepts in the field, Peter Hamlin, a PFI Associate, and Loudes German, Executive Director of PFI, partnered with Ryan Littman-Quinn, principal and founder of RLQ Consulting, LLC, to map the evolving definitions of NbS and NC, grounding them in their historical contexts and surfacing the real-world interpretations driving action today. We published a research paper, Nature-based Solutions and Natural Capital: An Introduction and Landscape Review, which spotlights the diverse NC and NbS approaches that governments, private sector leaders, and other stakeholders are deploying—and the tensions that arise when definitions diverge.
While NbS, NC, and Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) offer immense potential to unlock transformative, place-based climate outcomes, a persistent lack of funding is stalling momentum. That’s why this paper goes further, offering a strategic primer on how public finance mechanisms can be activated to scale these solutions—and identifying the pressing questions that must shape the next wave of research and implementation in the field.
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