SFC Correspondent Lu Taoran, Li Deshangyu
The 15th Five-Year Plan sets the goals of raising China's forest coverage rate to 25.8% and continuously enhancing the diversity, stability and sustainability of ecosystems, and explicitly stipulates that "support will be provided to ecologically degraded areas in carrying out ecological restoration and green development."
The World Bank first proposed Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in 2008. In a recent exclusive interview with a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald at the 2026 Duke International Forum, André Rodrigues de Aquino, Lead Environmental Specialist of the World Bank, stated that 80% of all Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) documents have now incorporated NbS initiatives in various forms.
André Rodrigues de Aquino pointed out that the financing gap remains a huge barrier. To achieve the global nature goals set by countries under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement, more than 700 billion US dollars in funding is needed annually. For tropical forests alone, at least 66 billion US dollars is required each year for their conservation and restoration.
Therefore, mobilizing private sector investment is the key to filling the financing gap. This year, Mongolia will host the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which will focus on the restoration of degraded land and sustainable rangeland management – one of the NbS focus areas with the greatest potential for large-scale global scaling and replication.
Forest NbS May Boost 50 Million Jobs
SFC Markets and Finance: Since NbS were first proposed by the World Bank in 2008 and became a core topic at the UN General Assembly in 2019, how many countries have included NbS in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)? How have they evolved in recent years?
André Aquino: NbS has evolved very rapidly in the global environmental and climate agenda. 80% of all NDCs submitted include some form of NbS in their action plans. Countries are proposing to implement NbS to achieve their climate goals, and crucially, NbS helps them address multiple objectives simultaneously--climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, the three key issues covered by major multilateral conventions.
Financial commitments to NbS have expanded dramatically. At the World Bank, we have provided over 10 billion in financing for nature-based activities from 2012 to 2023. As a whole, NbS are increasingly recognized as an effective tool to enhance climate resilience and protect biodiversity, while also meeting infrastructure needs.
A particularly important aspect of NbS for the World Bank is their ability to boost employment and create jobs, especially – but not exclusively – in rural and even remote areas with limited other economic opportunities. The forest sector alone supports around 50 million jobs worldwide. Our research has found that investments in nature generate ripple effects: for every 100 jobs created in the forest sector, an additional 73 jobs are generated in the broader economy. That is the multiplier effect.
Finally, I would like to note that technical understanding of nature-based solutions is also growing. A consistent finding we have is that NbS projects, when compared to gray infrastructure-only projects, outperform them in terms of economic impact, delivering lower costs and greater effectiveness. We have learned a great deal about how to implement NbS effectively.
SFC Markets and Finance: As the Ecological and Environmental Code is about to take effect, how do you assess the international significance of China's practices in the field of ecological civilization?
André Aquino: China's tangible results in nature conservation give us confidence that it is possible to reverse global nature loss and restore ecosystems. A foundational point is that the principle of ecological civilization is enshrined in China's Constitution--this sends a clear message that nature should never be an afterthought, but must be at the core of national planning. This principle is translated into concrete policies, such as China's ecological conservation red lines, which have designated nearly 30% of the country's national territory for conservation purposes. This policy offers valuable lessons for other countries around the world.
China also manages the world's largest payment for ecosystem services mechanism--the Grain for Green program. This mechanism provides financial incentives for local farmers and villagers to conserve and restore marginal lands, particularly sloped land, and has delivered remarkable environmental outcomes, including increased vegetation cover and reduced soil erosion. The World Bank is proud to have partnered with China on these initiatives, including long-term work on the Loess Plateau. These projects have yielded key lessons: success requires long-term engagement, a careful understanding of people's relationship with land and viable economic alternatives for local communities, and the deployment of the most advanced technologies for land restoration.
Another important area is China's protected area management. China has enacted a new Protected Areas Law and is working to enhance the effectiveness of its national parks and nature reserves. This offers numerous global lessons, as countries worldwide are seeking to manage their protected areas more effectively--including ensuring that these areas deliver tangible benefits to the people living around or even within them. This coexistence, the harmony of man and nature, is a core principle we discussed earlier.
This May, we will host a large delegation from 40 countries to visit China's Giant Panda National Park--this is a perfect example of how we are bridging Chinese expertise with the needs of countries around the world.
SFC Markets and Finance: China's 2035 NDC proposes to increase forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic meters compared to 2005. How do you evaluate such a climate target?
André Aquino: China has delivered significant, concrete results in reversing nature degradation, offering valuable lessons to the world. For example, China has accounted for 25% of the global growth in forest area over the past 20 to 30 years. China has made great strides in restoring forest areas, combating desertification, controlling sandstorms and sand encroachment, regulating and reducing soil erosion to boost soil fertility and reduce impacts on river systems. These are remarkable achievements delivered at a large scale.
This is precisely why the Global Knowledge Center was established--to disseminate these successful practices, because we need to scale up these approaches rather than just running pilot projects; rapid, large-scale action is essential.
COP17: Rangeland Restoration&Sustainable Management
SFC Markets and Finance: Which types of NbS have the greatest potential for large scale replication? What are the key priorities for COP17?
André Aquino: Restoring degraded land is a top candidate. The world has 2.2 billion hectares of degraded land, and many countries have committed to restoring this critical resource. It is also worth noting that this year is the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralism, and Mongolia, the neighboring country, is hosting COP17 to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, which will focus on land degradation, rangeland restoration, sustainable rangeland management, rotational grazing, increasing biomass, and optimizing herd sizes. This is an area with enormous global potential; China and Mongolia have already made significant progress here, and there is a huge demand for better rangeland and pastoral land management across Asia, Africa, and other regions.
Reforestation is another NbS with great scaling potential. Restoring forest cover, enhancing the ecological function of forests, establishing forest connectivity to combat habitat fragmentation, boosting carbon stocks, protecting existing forests, and creating habitats for endangered species and supporting biodiversity for mammals, birds, and other wildlife--these are critical actions for every country, as habitat fragmentation has become a widespread global issue. These two areas--degraded land restoration and reforestation--have the greatest potential for large-scale replication.
SFC Markets and Finance: What are some NbS application cases that have impressed you the most?
André Aquino: The World Bank has been working with many countries, particularly developing ones, on NbS implementation. I will highlight some of the most important and widely adopted NbS practices.
First is the restoration of degraded land – an effort to restore ecological functions to land degraded by activities such as agriculture, livestock rearing, and mining, restoring its capacity for production, supporting natural habitats, and more. Many countries are doing excellent work in this area, including China. This is one of the reasons the World Bank has established the Global Knowledge Center on Ecosystem Transitions in partnership with China.
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are also making strides. Ethiopia, for instance, has restored millions of hectares of land by adopting practices such as contour farming, microcatchment nets, and water harvesting techniques that allow water to infiltrate the soil, rehydrate it, and boost productivity. Kenya has implemented watershed management practices, including in rangelands and pastoral areas.
In Latin America, my home country, Brazil, has been highly effective in forest restoration, restoring forests to their ecological role as providers of water, carbon sinks that sequester large amounts of carbon, and regulators of water quality and quantity. Land restoration is a core NbS practice.
I can also speak about coastal management. Countries are increasingly using nature-based solutions to protect coastal areas. As we all know, mangroves play a vital role in stabilizing coastal ecosystems, and coral reefs and seagrasses also reduce coastal risk. Many countries are working to restore, conserve, and sustainably manage these coastal ecosystems. Indonesia is a notable example here--the World Bank has been collaborating with Indonesia on the sustainable management of its coastal resources, engaging local communities in the protection and expansion of mangroves.
The list goes on. NbS are also widely and importantly applied in urban areas, including projects to reduce runoff, manage stormwater to cut stormwater flow and flooding, and improve urban drainage systems. These are some of the concrete NbS applications we are witnessing globally.
Bottlenecks of NbS Scaling-up
SFC Markets and Finance: From a global perspective, what is the biggest bottleneck currently hindering the scaling up of NbS? Is it the financing gap, immature methodologies, or political will? What kind of coordination is needed?
André Aquino: Let me start with coordination, which is a major barrier. Nature-based solutions are complex because they require intersectoral collaboration--they cannot be implemented by a single government department alone. NbS touches on agriculture, urban planning, land rights, and economic opportunities, so success requires a coordinated, harmonized effort across all these sectors, much like an orchestra playing in unison. A key barrier is the lack of adequate intersectoral coordination, long-term planning, clear institutional mandates that transcend individual agencies, and effective coordination mechanisms to align institutional actions. This is not an insurmountable barrier, however. China, for example, has valuable lessons to share in this regard--including how it coordinates NbS activities from the central government all the way down to local and village levels, and how it uses land use and territorial planning to drive joint action on ecological restoration.
A second major barrier is financing, which is critical. Nature-based solutions deliver enormous benefits, but these benefits are often realized at the global or regional scale, while the costs are borne locally. For example, local communities managing tropical forests in Brazil, Colombia, or Africa invest time and even put their safety at risk to protect these forests, and the benefit--climate stability--is a global public good enjoyed by everyone. These communities bear the cost of protection, yet the benefits are shared worldwide. Designing instruments to address this scale mismatch is key to solving the financing challenge, and this requires multiple actions, including engaging the private sector to capture environmental benefits through consumer action, and increasing government funding, among other measures.
The third challenge I want to highlight is the technical aspect of NbS, which is still a relatively new field. Applying nature-based solutions to meet infrastructure needs is innovative, even though nature has always been a vital asset to human life. We just came out of a conference where we discussed ancient Chinese wisdom about the harmony of man and nature, as well as the traditional practices of Indigenous peoples in Brazil and other parts of the world. Working with nature is not new, but using nature as infrastructure is, and it requires spatial planning, spatial analysis, high-resolution imagery, and the capacity to process this data. The good news is that these technologies are advancing rapidly, becoming cheaper and more accessible, so this is an area with great hope.
SFC Markets and Finance: How large is the financing gap for nature? And where will the money come from?
André Aquino: To achieve the goals countries have set for biodiversity under the CBD Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the climate goals under the Paris Agreement, according to UNEP data, global investment in NbS needs to increase 2.5 times by 2030 to reach $571 billion per year—an amount equivalent to only around 0.5% of global GDP in 2024—and more than triple by 2050 to $771 billion per year. Meanwhile, existing nature-harmful financial flows must be gradually phased out and reallocated. Of the additional investment required by 2030, the restoration sector accounts for the largest share at $181 billion, followed by sustainable land management ($101 billion) and conservation ($68 billion).
We need at least 66 billion every year just to conserve and restore tropical forests. There is a significant global financing gap, and public financing alone cannot fill it. This means the private sector has a key role to play in scaling up investments in nature and climate action. This will be one of our biggest challenges in the years ahead: how to create an enabling environment that encourages the private sector to invest in nature conservation, climate resilience building, and related areas. We have seen significant movement and progress, with many new initiatives launched--at COP30, for example, the business community participated extensively, with a dedicated business track at the conference. However, these private sector commitments still need to be more concrete and translated into larger financial pledges and actual investments. There is room for improvement, and for greater ambition from the private sector.
One final point related to green finance: in addition to investing more in nature, we also need to close the tap on investments that destroy nature. We must halt the negative financial flows that drive ecological degradation. Rebuilding nature is not enough; we also need to stop eroding our existing natural capital.
SFC Markets and Finance: What strategies does the World Bank have to mobilize private sector financing?
André Aquino: For financial institutions like the World Bank, our core role is to develop innovative financial products that mitigate risks for private sector investments in nature and climate action. A key priority in the coming years is to develop guarantee and insurance products that unlock more private investment in NbS--reducing risk and the cost of capital is essential to attracting private sector funding.
A number of institutions are already implementing highly innovative mechanisms in this space. For example, the World Bank supported the Brazilian government in developing the EcoInvest program, a blended finance mechanism where public funds are used to mobilize financing from the private commercial banking sector for green development. The Brazilian government sets sectoral priorities--such as pastureland restoration and the bioeconomy--and offers low-cost, low-interest capital to commercial banks on the condition that the banks match the public funding with their own private capital. This program has proven to be highly effective in mobilizing large-scale financing for green sectors in Brazil.
For the private sector, there are three key roles: providing financing, driving innovation, and offering technical expertise. We need the private sector's cutting-edge technologies and innovative approaches to address the highly complex challenges of natural resource management and NbS implementation.
SFC Markets and Finance: Beyond the private sector, what other innovative approaches does the World Bank have to mobilize more financing and advance natural capital valuation?
André Aquino: The World Bank Group--which includes our private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC)--has been working on several fronts, starting with supporting innovative financial mechanisms. We have assisted countries and companies in issuing sustainability-linked bonds, green bonds, and blue bonds, which raise capital from the market for nature conservation and green development initiatives. This is an area where we are very active.
Our most active area is direct investment. We provide financing for countries and companies to invest in nature-based activities, including reforestation, sustainable agriculture, nature-based tourism, and sustainable urban development. We mobilize World Bank resources and various innovative mechanisms to make concrete investments in nature. These three areas--innovative financial mechanisms, nature valuation, and direct investment--are our key priorities for this year, and we are advancing all of them at full speed.
Chief Producer: Zhao Haijian
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Reporter: Lu Taoran, Li Deshangyu
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Produced by: Southern Finance Omnimedia Group
