The Client

Nature-based solutions (“NBS”) have to date not really featured in mainstream discussions on climate change.  In fact, they make up some 10% of the conversation and 3% of the funding¹.  And yet current climate science demonstrates that keeping the increase in global temperatures to well below 2°C requires a holistic response across three principal areas, including NBS – and that NBS can provide around a third of the solution to climate change²:

The Nature4Climate (“N4C”) initiative was established in 2017 with a six-year mandate to increase investment in and action on nature-based solutions in support of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.  Founded by US charity The Nature Conservancy (“TNC”), N4C is a collaborative global initiative supported by 16 partner organisations*.

The Challenge

Two years on from launch, N4C had effectively “proved the concept” and the value it adds by filling a gap in the climate architecture as an aggregator for NBS.  But it was unclear whether N4C had the right organisational set up and resources really to fulfil its purpose by the end of 2023.

The Project

The project aimed to help N4C clearly articulate their 5-year plan and build their case to ensure they had the mandate, resources and set up to amplify and accelerate their strategy.  The Eden McCallum team worked with N4C to:

• Reaffirm N4C’s purpose and outcomes, and create a clear line of sight to funding
• Define and give clarity to N4C’s future strategy, mandate and governance
• Design the operating model, quantify the required resourcing and design a measurement framework
• Build a financial model to support the business case
• Design a high-level 6-month implementation plan to set N4C up for further success

The Impact

The plan has provided clarity for N4C, helping the initiative to engage its partners and other supporting organisations.  Critical conversations with funders, partners and TNC are now based around the new plan and its clear strategic, operational and financial requirements.

Lucy Almond, Director of N4C, commented:

“Nature4Climate is still a relatively new initiative, albeit one with the support of many large environmental and UN organisations, so this work came at a critical time in our development and allowed us to build out a fully-costed operational and financial plan for the near future.”

Source: ¹www.Nature4Climate.org;  ²2017 peer reviewed paper, National Academy of Sciences of USA

*N4C partner organisations:  Nature4Climate (N4C) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN-REDD, UNEP, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Conservation International (CI), The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Woods Hole Research Center, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), World Resources Institute (WRI), WWF, We Mean Business, the Food and Land Use Coalition and Youth4Nature.