Earth Day 2024: UN report calls for nature-based solutions for nutrition security
22 Apr 2024 --- On the occasion of International Earth Day, the UN Capital for Development Fund (CDF) spotlights a newly released report reflecting on the progress achieved between 2020 and 2023 in supporting Sustainable Natural Resource Management (SNRM) and Nature Based Solutions (NBS) through its Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL).
“NBS and SNRM are solutions that work with nature to address societal problems — in this instance, achieving the globally agreed-upon Sustainable Development Goals and bolstering action on adaptation to the impacts of climate change in least developed countries, African nations and small island developing states,” the UN CDF asserts.
LoCAL is the UN CDF’s internationally recognized mechanism of action to tackle aspects of poverty, including nutritional insecurity and access to safe drinking water, in the context of climate change and in collaboration with local governments.
The UN CDF supports local governments in adapting essential services to climate change, including water management, irrigation and agriculture extension services.
Nature-based solutions
The publication explores the implementation of the four LoCAL workstreams over the past four years — awareness and capacities, mainstreaming and investment, financing mechanism and outreach and learning.
Looking at awareness and capacities, the text highlights progress in the production of organic pesticides and organic manure using farm and animal waste in Ghana alongside partner SOS Children Villages. In Mali, farmers and villages completed training on composition and fertilization techniques for soil and crops.
LoCAL offers solutions that work with nature to address societal problems.LoCAL supports awareness and capacity building through science-backed decision-making using climate risk vulnerability assessments (CRVAs).
Uganda’s CRVA presents a baseline to define adaptation and biodiversity actions, while identifying impactful areas of support for NBS. These include bioengineering for erosion protection around infrastructure, restoration of degraded water catchment areas through agroforestry, ecosystem-based watershed management and the promotion of soil conservation.
Similar CRVAS are underway in Ghana, Mali, Niger and São Tomé and Príncipe.
Bottom-up financing
In terms of mainstreaming and investment, an analysis of 1,062 LoCAL investments made in the selected time frame in 11 countries — Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, The Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali, Mozambique, Niger and Tanzania — reveals a range of adaptation strategies aiming to address the climate emergency through the conservation and rehabilitation of ecosystems through a bottom-up approach.
The country-based mechanisms include minimum fiscal conditions to be met by local governments. For example, Burkina Faso’s investment menu references its naturally determined contribution, which points to the country’s potential to develop its climate-smart agriculture, renewable energies and traditional knowledge on these matters.
LoCAL’s outreach and learning agenda spotlights the need for continued and further investment in evidence-based decision making, work alongside indigenous communities to tap into existent SNRM knowledge and the promotion of practices that balance resource use and environmental conservation.
By Milana Nikolova
