What are nature-based solutions?

IUCN defines NbS as:

Actions to protect, sustainably manage and

restore natural and modified ecosystems in
ways that address societal challenges (e.g.
climate change, food and water security,
natural disasters) effectively and adaptively, to
provide both human well-being and
biodiversity benefits.
IUCN Global Standard for NbSTM
Nature, biodiversity, peace and
conflict

- Interconnections between nature,

conflict and the environment

- Environmental peacebuilding

- What scope for nature-based solutions

in peacebuilding efforts?
 IUCN Protected Gender-
Natural and based
Resource conserved violence and
Governance areas the
Framework environment

Environmental
Defenders
NATURE Climate
CONSERVATION / Diplomacy

PEACE / CONFLICT
AT IUCN

Species Eco-DRR
IUCN BRIDGE
Refugees and (Building River
the Dialogue and
environment Governance)
Project
IUCN reports & collaborations on nature
conservation, peace & conflict

• IUCN Flagship Report on Conflict and Conservation (April 2021)

• Voices for Peace and Conservation – Podcast (CI, PeaceNexus, WWF Germany,
IUCN)

• Forthcoming Report on Migration, Conflict and Environmental Change (IUCN CEESP

Theme on Environment and Peace)

• White Paper on the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding (GPP, PeaceNexus,

EnPAx, IUCN collaborative project)

• IUCN – PAX collaboration on NbS and Armed Conflict (in the run up to UNEA 5.2)
GEF PROJECT INNOVATIONS TO MANAGE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH
CONFLICT AND FRAGILITY

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

RISK MANAGEMENT
Integrating Positive
Peace in Conservation
Conversations
Alexis Manuela Cañari Moña
Youth Speak Representative
IUCN Global Youth Summit
 Outcomes from the IUCN Global Youth
Summit
“Healing the human-nature relationship:
Youth perspectives on positive peace”
Move from the anthropocentric
approach towards a development with
Clear understanding of the urgent environmental ethics and ecocentrism.
need to restore meaningful relationship Recognition that humans and non-human
between human and non-human beings are part of an interconnected
beings for reaching positive peace. ecosystem.

The human dominant relatinship

Negative Peace
with nature has more than
Absence of direct violence
reached its limits: the resulting
ecological and environmental
damage is now the greatest
Positive Peace threat to gloal security.
Deconstructing structures,
situations and
relationships that cause
harmful conflict

Presence of equity, justice Creation of resilience to face

and sustainability current and future challenges.
 Key priorities

Access to information
Transformative and Inclusive Education Acceptance of the rights of others Easily access and exchange
-Mainstream education fails in -Rights of nature:Reconigzing that human information, free from
incorporating environmental and and non human beings equally deserve restrictions , censorship or
ecological citizenship rights and freedom repercussion-reporting on
climate crises and crimes
-Digital and Linguistic barriers( English is -Rights of indigenous communities and against environment.
not the language of conservation) ethnic minorities( few legal protection)
A lack of respect for other cosmovision is
part of this opression.

Equitable distribution of resources and

opportunities
-Poor regulation of the extractives and
Green Jobs Opportunities industrial sectors leads to ecological
-Skills and professional time to support conservation. abuses and a lack of equitable benefit-
-Multidisciplinary is key. sharing with local communities.
-Smallholder farmers play a crucial role
-Lack of mentorship and funding ( IUCN Academy) in food security but agricultural poverty
-Entrepreneurship & alternative business models. arise( intergenerational renewal)
-Youth, indigenous people and other
minority groups in decision making
spaces
-Understand the meaning of local
economies
How to address environmental damage in relation
to armed conflicts and what are avenues for
Action for Nature?
• Understanding the challenges through improving data
collection and monitoring to improve environmental impact
assessments.
• Conflicts have unique environmental features that need tailor
made solutions
• Opportunities and limitations on the spectrum of actions for
nature
• Finding solution in practice and in policies
 Existing examples and ideas of actions for Nature

• In Iraq, UNEP is using naturally occuring soil bacteria to decontaminate land from oil
spills caused by the conflict
• In Bangladesh, the government in collaboration with UN agencies are setting up
reforestation projects in areas with large refugee camps
• In Colombia, NbS are used through collaborative tools and methods are implemented
implemented in periphery areas, empowering local communities demanding spatial
justice.
• In Sudan, water management through NbS are used to improve access to water sources
• Inclusion of nature-based thinking in green humanitarian response and recovery to deal
with, e.g. camp settings, waste managements etc.
• There are opportunities to include Green Infrastructure in rebuilding back better and
greener of urban areas affected by armed conflict
Geneva Nature-based
Solutions Dialogues -
NbS and Peacebuilding
Ulrika Åkesson, Lead Policy Specialist Environment and Climate Change
Environmental peacebuilding (incl NbS)
– Sida´s view
• Perspectives – environment, conflict sensitivity, the human rights-based approach,
gender equality and the perspectives of people living
in poverty
• People living in poverty - agents, rights holders
• Environmental strategies and actions need to
take conflict sensitivity seriously
• Peace processes and agreements need to
integrate environment concerns
Options for future action

• Stockholm+50 – a possibility
• Early warning signals of climate change as risk
multiplier
• Locally led conflict-sensitive action for environment
and climate action
• Broad involvement of women and men who are
most affected
• Agroforestry - NbS with potential
Example of Sida’s support: environment,
resource management and conflict
Awareness of
the rising
conflict risks
related to
access and
control over
water resources
and protection
of water
ecosystems
globally
Nature-Based Solutions and Peace-Building:
Voices and Stories of Environmental Defenders
Caroline Seagle, IUCN-CEESP – email: [email protected]
 • 331 human rights and environmental defenders were
killed in 2020, the vast majority of whom were dependent
Publication of on land, forests and sustainable livelihoods (Front Line
Defenders, 2020).
Policy Matters • The greatest threat comes from extractive industries

22 – three- (mining), logging, palm oil plantations, large-scale

agricultural expansion, as well as conservation area
enclosures and enforcement.
volume • The stories and voices of environmental defenders across
the globe: Special issue of Policy Matters
special issue • Links to publication (open-access):
on https://www.iucn.org/commissions/commission-
environmental-economic-and-social-
policy/resources/policy-matters
environmental
defenders
Volume II - Grassroots in Action
With guest contributor, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim,
environmental defender and Coordinator of the Association of
Peul Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), this
volume asks the global community to take a stand to recognize
Indigenous wisdom and action across the globe. It asks the
world to take into consideration local communities actions to
protect the environment, describing initiatives taken by
defenders to protect the environment and themselves from
eviction, landlessness, mining, conservation, and other forms of
oppression. It highlights how some conservation policies and
practices are themselves a source of persecution of local and
environmental land defenders.
Volume II's cover features Mama Fikile Ntshangase, who
was an environmental activist and vice-chair of a subcommittee
of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice
Organization, a community-based organisation that has legally
challenged a planned expansion of the Somkhele mine coal
mine owned by Tendele Coal Mining Ltd. She was shot dead in
her house on the evening of Thursday, October 22, in her home
west of Mtubatuba in KwaZulu-Natal province in South
Africa./© Rob Symons. Background photo: Tendele Mine coal
washing facility/© Rob Symons.
• Volume III - Conservation and the need for greater
protection

• With guest contributor Manuela L. Picq, rights defender

and Professor of International Relations at Universidad San
Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) and Amherst College (USA),
this volume presents concrete and powerful calls to action
for the conservation community itself, recognizing that
conservation can cause more harm than good it if does not
take a stand to protect the human rights of land defenders
worldwide. Picq and authors in the volume call on the
conservation community to embed and uphold human rights
in all conservation endeavors to better support and integrate
conciliatory solutions based to the biodiversity crisis based
on principles of equity, justice, and co-existence.
• Volume III's cover features Porlajee “Billy”
Rakchongcharoen, who was an Indigenous activist from
Thailand, leading a lawsuit against the Kaengkrachan
National Park due to the forcible eviction and burning of
more than 100 houses belonging to Karen Indigenous
peoples. These evictions resulted from the designation of the
forest as a protected area by the Thai government in 1979,
forcing the displacement of Indigenous villages that lived
there for generations. Billy disappeared in 2014, after being
arrested by park authorities, and his body was found in an oil
barrel in 2019 (Human Rights Watch, 2019).
Imagining Otherwise:
Steps forward for the Voices of defenders: Calls to
Recognition of Action: (1) – Hindou Oumarou
Indigenous wisdom and
resistance Ibrahim
By Hindou Oumarou • Excerpt from the special issue of the CEESP
Ibrahim publication Policy Matters, focusing on the stories and
Available at: voices of environmental defenders. Article by Hindou
https://www.iucn.org/ne Oumarou Ibrahim *
ws/commission- • A call to action:
environmental-
• 1. The criminalisation of environmental defenders must
economic-and-social- stop immediately. No one should be killed, assaulted,
policy/202109/imaginin driven from the land of their ancestors, or simply
g-otherwise-steps- marginalised for standing up for our most precious
forward-a-greater- common good: life itself.
recognition-indigenous- • 2. We need dedicated support, resources, intelligence
wisdom-and-resistance and funding. Right now, for us, the defenders of the
environment, resistance has but one name: action. To do
this, we need to be given the means to act.
• 3. Finally, climate policies and actions need to be more
participatory, from design to implementation, which
means improving Indigenous participation in decision-
making.
 Voices of defenders - Calls to Action (2): Manuela
Picq
• Manuela Picq: “Environmental defenders as first guardians of the world’s
biodiversity”
• Available at: https://www.iucn.org/commissions/commission-environmental-
economic-and-social-policy/resources/policy-matters
• A Call to Action: First, climate action must include human rights. In 2021, the
representative of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate
Change (IIPFCC) asked the United Nations to fully integrate the rights of
Indigenous peoples in climate action, in preparation for the COP 26. Inclusion
of human rights in climate change initiatives must be a top priority in climate
negotiations and climate action, including REDD and REDD+ initiatives.
• Second, international laws must be enforced so as to require, at a minimum,
the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of local communities for any land
project (extraction or conservation project) on Indigenous and local
population’s territories, whether formal land title is held or not. Consent must “Communities are putting their lives on the line
be given, by Indigenous and local peoples, for mining and other mega- because they have no choice. For them,
projects, as well as conservation projects.
defending nature is not just about taking an
• Third, we must learn to protect local communities’ ways of life and their ecological stand; it is a matter of survival. If local
situated relationships with the environments in which they live, learning from communities lose the ecosystems upon which
their example, so that they can continue to protect biodiversity through their they depend, they not only lose their land but also
own environmental management, knowledge transmission, and cultural values their entire way of life.” – Manuela Picq
embedded in their languages and lifeways.
 Additional thoughts –Nature-Based Solutions and environmental defenders
• Value and accountability in NBS (context of Natural Capital, offsets, green bonds) – must ensure that
local and Indigenous communities’ values of nature and land are not sideswept.
• FPIC must not be misused; communities should have the right to say “no” within context of FPIC
(encourage rights-based approaches/protections in NBS).
• As we all work together as an IUCN community to promote conservation of nature and diverse
valuations of biodiversity, and in order to further protect Indigenous and environmental defenders'
rights, we must pay attention to power relationships within the conservation world.
• While different stakeholders (defenders, conservationists, researchers, practitioners, private sector)
might use the same language of "Nature-Based Solutions," they might mean different things. Some
Indigenous peoples might think of themselves as the “Nature-based Solution.” Meaningful and
inclusive dialogues and partnerships with IPLCs must occur if the rights of environmental defenders
are to be recognized. Inclusion of local and Indigenous peoples occurs within the context of vast
political, social and economic power differentials.
“It’s a generation that I dreamed of as a child, when we – my Indigenous brothers and
sisters – were still too often alone in saying that our Mother Earth was sick. This is a
generation that should have dreams, but for which we are now on the verge of leaving a
nightmare. Yet it is a generation of hope that is dawning everywhere in Europe, North and
South America, Africa, the Pacific, and Asia. It is a generation that can finally put an end
to this war on nature” – Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim