The hardest question is not whether we should fund nature and sustainable agriculture, but what we are willing to compromise to make those solutions work at scale.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Sustainable Agricultural practices are increasingly recognised as vital pathways for climate action, but often requires balancing competing objectives across climate, biodiversity, livelihoods, food production, and economic development.
Indirect land-use change captures this difficulty: an incomplete conversion to sustainable practices may simply displace conventional production and continue to drive deforestation elsewhere if yields fall. Safeguarding against this is easier said than done, with the projected rise in global food demands from 35% to 56% by 2050. Similarly, natural ecosystems are often reduced to its functional utility in the NbS sector—it's carbon sinking potential. While NbS offer critical pathways for climate resilience, NbS implementation can risk posing ecological risks by driving maladaptation without holistic ecological frameworks in place.
Cognisant that we cannot solve everything at once, this session pairs the launch of our Sustainable Land Use Community grant call, our mechanism for action, with a complementary panel discussion. The panel will seek to open key conversations on trade-offs stakeholders must navigate to compromise effectively, drive impact in these thematic areas to work with nature.
