Nature-based solutions to multiple crises: Scaling urban implementation in cities in Asia and the Pacific

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Introduction

Loss of biodiversity, climate adaptation needs, and unsustainable urbanization represent multiple crises felt in Asia and the Pacific. These interconnected challenges threaten natural and built ecosystems and human wellbeing. There is a pressing need for transformative, multi-level actions.

This brief examines the potential for nature-based solutions (NbS) to address these crises holistically and provide economic, social, biodiversity, and resilience benefits. To achieve Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), this brief recommends strengthening NbS integration in urban planning and policy, encouraging NbS localization, using blended finance mechanisms, and harnessing scientific and local indigenous knowledge to scale NbS implementation in Asia and the Pacific cities and communities.

Context

Cities in Asia and the Pacific are at the forefront of multiple environmental crises. Biodiversity loss threatens food security, cultural heritage, and essential ecosystem services. Climate change intensifies extreme weather events, causing economic losses, displacement, and health risks. Unsustainable urbanization further exacerbates these issues by contributing to pollution, resource depletion, and socio-economic inequalities. The impacts of these crises vary across sub-regions:

• Pacific Islands face threats from sea-level rise, coral reef degradation, and extreme weather events.
• Central Asia struggles with water scarcity, land degradation, and fragile mountain ecosystems.
• South and Southeast Asia experience extreme heat, pollution, and rapid unplanned urbanization.

Despite these challenges, NbS present a promising avenue for urban adaptation and resilience. NbS involve actions inspired by nature—such as green infrastructure, wetland restoration, and sustainable land management—to address societal challenges by preserving and enhancing ecosystem services. Cities can benefit greatly from NbS, improving air and water quality, reducing flood risks, and fostering biodiversity. Examples like China’s Sponge Cities demonstrate how NbS can be integrated into urban planning to enhance resilience, mitigate climate risks, and create livable urban spaces.

Challenges in implementing NbS in Asia and the Pacific

While NbS offer significant benefits, their widespread implementation in Asia and the Pacific faces multiple obstacles:

• Limited awareness and political will: Many policymakers and urban planners lack sufficient knowledge about NbS and their economic benefits, leading to weak integration in policies and urban development frameworks.
• Regulatory and land-use constraints: Traditional urban planning regulations often limit multifunctional land use, restricting NbS implementation in densely populated areas.
• Financial barriers: NbS are often perceived as costly due to inadequate valuation mechanisms that fail to capture their long-term economic, environmental, and social benefits.
• Lack of local and indigenous knowledge integration: Traditional knowledge systems, which could enhance NbS effectiveness, are often overlooked in urban planning.
• Coordination and governance challenges: Policy fragmentation and weak collaboration between national and local governments hinder NbS scalability and cross-sectoral integration.
• Rapid urbanization pressures: Expanding cities face competing demands for land, making it difficult to allocate space for NbS without compromising housing and infrastructure needs.

“To achieve CBD Target 12, SDG11, and the Paris Agreement, this brief advocates for promoting transformative NbS at all urban scales. By integrating NbS into urban planning and development, cities in Asia and the Pacific can create sustainable and resilient futures for all.”

NbS opportunities and recommendations

To overcome these challenges, the brief recommends a series of strategic actions to scale up NbS in urban environments:

1. Defining Nature-based Solutions

• Develop or adopt a practical definition of nature-based solutions: Ensuring it is environmentally and culturally relevant, with consideration for the IUCN Global Standard definition.
• Integrate the chosen definition: Into national-local level policies, regulations, and guidelines, tailoring it as necessary to the given level of government.

2. NbS localization

• Vertically integrate national NbS policies: Into local development plans, adapting definitions and planning principles to align with the local context.
• Harness local and indigenous knowledge systems: Local governments should actively engage with academia, and local and indigenous communities to inform robust and ecologically sound NbS design that addresses local needs and avoids exacerbating existing inequalities.

“Indigenous peoples are nature, and nature is indigenous peoples – If we talk about nature-based solutions, then we need to talk about indigenous people’s solutions.”

An indigenous leader from Malaysia speaking at the Asia-Pacific Climate Week, 2023

3. Mainstreaming NbS in land-use and urban planning

• Strategic planning: Cities, especially secondary and emerging ones, should develop long-term strategic visions for NbS implementation, including integrating NbS in infrastructure, resilience, disaster risk, and biodiversity planning frameworks. Consider using the UNDRR NbS Toolkit to integrate best practices.
• Approve NbS as valid technical solutions: For various urban challenges (e.g. flood protection, urban heat mitigation), promoting them as alternatives to grey infrastructure.
• Incorporate NbS into zoning regulations: Review and update zoning codes that allow for multifunctional land use and prioritize green spaces, urban forests, and other NbS. Governments should work with academia and local communities to conduct NbS feasibility assessments and identify priority areas, considering peri-urban zones to leverage greater land availability for transformative NbS interventions.
• Develop local implementation guidelines and performance-based standards: For context-specific interventions and effective monitoring, focusing on achieving general outcomes rather than specific prescriptions. This allows for adaptive management that demonstrates long-term viability.
• Assign urban planning departments leading roles: These are roles in developing and maintaining urban NbS to ensure effective integration, long-term planning, and coordination.
• Participatory planning and coproduction: NbS should take a collaborative, multi-actor partnership approach that engages with and delegates power to local communities, ensuring NbS are culturally appropriate, foster community ownership, and can support land tenure for long-term sustainability.
• Urban renewal and regeneration: Incorporate green infrastructure into redevelopment plans and prioritize NbS for urban renewal and regeneration projects.
• Consider incentive programs: National and local governments could offer tax breaks, subsidies, and carbon and biodiversity credits to businesses implementing NbS and use awards and certifications to recognize and reward exemplary NbS projects.

4. Multilevel governance

• Enhanced horizontal cooperation between sectors and departments at all levels of government to mainstream NbS: As suggested by the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework, all levels of government should collaboratively review and update existing policies and technical guidelines to enable NbS. Cities should develop their local development plans in line with national policy. Effective collaboration among various sectors, departments, and statutory authorities, e.g. via interdepartmental committees, can overcome siloed thinking and is crucial for policy and regulatory coherence. Additionally, collaboration with experts in landscape ecology, urban planning, and other relevant fields can help overcome reliance on grey infrastructure and design multifunctional NbS.
• Improved intermunicipal cooperation and integrated coastal zone management: To effectively and efficiently address transboundary issues like climate change-induced flooding and air pollution that transcend multiple jurisdictions, neighbouring municipalities, particularly coastal cities, should work together to pool resources and expertise to develop joint strategies and implement coordinated NbS interventions.
• Capacity building: Governments should invest in programs that train city officials on cross-sectoral policy development and intermunicipal cooperation.

5. Finance

• Research NbS accountancy, valuation, and monitoring to support the integration of NbS into financial frameworks: Although it has been notoriously difficult to evaluate the nonmaterial benefits from nature, better methods of accounting NbS co-benefits will be needed to compete with conventional grey infrastructure. Research suggests using cost-benefit analysis to consider the long-term socioeconomic and ecological costs of inaction.
• Capacity building: Governments should invest in programs that train city officials to better understand the financial benefits of NbS.
• Utilize blended finance to mobilize private and public capital for NbS: Governments at all levels and philanthropic funds should seek to partner with the private sector to derisk NbS investments using de-risking funds, grants, concessional capital, and technical assistance funds. This will also scale NbS implementation by bridging the gap between perceived project risk and investors’ return expectations.

Citation

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), (2025). Nature-based solutions to multiple crises: Scaling urban implementation in Asia and the Pacific. ESCAP, 2025. Print.