ENACT Partnership Seeks to Tackle Climate Change Through Nature-Based Solutions

What is ENACT Partnership?

The ENACT (Enhancing Nature-based Solutions for an Accelerated Climate Transformation) partnership was launched at the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in December. The partnership is led by Germany, Egypt, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), along with 13 other countries. The goal of ENACT is to address climate change, land degradation, and biodiversity loss by using Nature-based Solutions.

Nature-based Solutions involve sustainable actions to manage, protect, and restore natural and modified ecosystems. These solutions address economic, social, and environmental problems while also improving human well-being, ecosystem services, and biodiversity. ENACT will coordinate global efforts on using Nature-based Solutions to respond to climate change and environmental decline.

What are Nature-based Solutions?

Nature-based Solutions involve taking actions to protect, restore, and sustainably manage ecosystems. These include terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems. The goal is to address challenges related to social, economic, and environmental issues in an effective and flexible way, as also reported in “Key Enablers of and Barriers to the Uptake and Implementation of Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Settings: A Review” by Sarabi et al. (2019).

When well-designed and implemented, Nature-based Solutions provide benefits for both human well-being and nature. They can enhance ecosystem services, build resilience to climate change, and conserve biodiversity. Some examples are protecting wetlands to filter water or restoring forests to absorb carbon dioxide. Nature-based Solutions aim for a symbiotic relationship between people and nature, as also reported in “Nature-Based Solutions for Water Management in Peri-Urban Areas: Barriers and Lessons Learned from Implementation Experiences” by Ramírez-Agudelo et al. (2020).

What are the Goals of ENACT Partnership?

The ENACT partnership has set three main goals to accomplish through Nature-based Solutions.

1. The first goal is to enhance protection from climate impacts and build resilience for over 1 billion vulnerable people globally. This includes a target to help at least 500 million women and girls specifically.
2. The second ENACT goal is to secure 2.4 billion hectares of healthy and sustainable ecosystems globally. This would be achieved through conservation of 45 million hectares, sustainable management of 2 billion hectares, and restoration of 350 million hectares of land and oceans.
3. The third goal focuses on using Nature-based Solutions to increase global emissions reductions. Protecting, conserving and restoring carbon-rich ecosystems like forests, peatlands, mangroves and seagrass meadows are key strategies to absorb more carbon dioxide and lower greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

ENACT Partnership Priority Areas

The ENACT partnership has defined eight priority areas to focus efforts on implementing Nature-based Solutions globally.

1. Food security and land productivity
2. Adaptation and disaster risk reduction
3. Oceans and sustainable blue economy
4. Urban resilience
5. Green-grey infrastructure
6. Ecosystems in national/subnational mitigation strategies
7. Mobilizing private investment
8. Health, climate and ecosystems

Some top priorities are food security, climate change adaptation, ocean sustainability, and mobilizing private sector investment into Nature-based Solutions. Specifically, ENACT will work to boost food security and land productivity through ecosystem protection and sustainable agriculture.

Partners will also collaborate on climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies informed by Nature-based Solutions. Ocean conservation and sustainable use is another priority area, encompassing challenges like fisheries management. On the economic side, ENACT aims to increase private sector financing and engagement with Nature-based Solutions across various industries.

Other priority areas highlighted include improving urban resilience to climate impacts through green infrastructure, integrating natural ecosystems into national climate change mitigation planning, and addressing links between environment, climate and public health.

Progress and Expansion of ENACT Partnership

The ENACT partnership has made progress on tracking global commitments related to Nature-based Solutions. The first comprehensive report quantifying implementation of Nature-based Solutions commitments globally is slated for release in early 2024. This launch report will kickstart an annual series monitoring country progress towards the ENACT goals.

The partnership has also expanded recently with 6 new countries and an international organization joining during the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) held in Dubai.

New ENACT Partners

• France, USA, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Pakistan
• UN Environment Program

Existing Partners

• Founding: Canada, EU, Spain, Malawi, Norway, South Korea, Japan, Slovenia
• Launched by: Germany, Egypt

The new partners include France, the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Pakistan and the UN Environment Programme. These additions build on the 14 original ENACT launch partners, signaling growing international momentum for scaling up Nature-based Solutions to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and other interconnected environmental challenges facing humanity.