Uganda is experiencing increasing climate variability alongside ongoing ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. Changes in rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, and more frequent extreme events, such as floods, droughts, and landslides, are interacting with degraded wetlands, declining forest cover, and stressed catchment systems to intensify vulnerability across both rural and peri-urban areas. 

These interacting pressures place particular stress on water security, climate-sensitive agricultural systems, and exposure to climate-related disasters, reinforcing the case for adaptation measures that restore and strengthen ecosystem function. 

This inventory has been developed to identify and analyze nature-based solutions (NbS) for adaptation implemented in Uganda since 2015. Its purpose is not only to compile a list of projects but also to establish how ecosystem-based interventions are applied in practice to reduce climate vulnerability, strengthen resilience, and provide a structured basis for comparing them across landscapes, ecosystems, and risk contexts. The inventory documents the approaches taken by each intervention, the climate and biodiversity risks they address, the ecosystems they target, and the beneficiaries they are intended to serve.

The economy and citizens’ livelihoods in Zambia are highly dependent on the country’s natural resources. Agriculture, for example, accounts for approximately 3.4% of the GDP and provides employment for about 70% of the population. The country's forests and fisheries are estimated to contribute about 4.7% and 3.3% of its GDP, respectively, while its 20 national parks, 36 game management areas, and 490 forest reserves play a crucial role in water regulation, food security, and sustaining local economies. 

This dependency makes the country and its people highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and underscores the need for mainstreaming NbS, and ecosystem-based adaptation strategies in particular, into national policies to ensure that actions to adapt to the impacts of climate change are planned for and that the country’s ecosystems continue to be healthy and provide for communities. This is especially relevant because Zambia’s country development strategies highlight increasing temperature, erratic rainfall, droughts, and floods as threats to its economic growth and food security, with projections pointing to worsening climatic conditions. 

The inventory aims to showcase the variety of NbS projects that have been completed recently or are currently under implementation in Zambia. It highlights the varied responses across the country to the climate and biodiversity crises, including efforts to address the increasing risks and vulnerabilities brought about by a changing climate. The inventory also aims to help stakeholders understand the NbS implementation landscape in Zambia, pinpoint existing gaps, potential synergies, and collaboration opportunities, and avoid duplication.

Mining is one of the world’s most energy-intensive industries, yet it is also central to the global energy transition. As companies increasingly adopt renewable energy to reduce emissions, governments have an opportunity to ensure these investments also support local development and community resilience. 

This publication complements the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development’s series on local content policy guidance by focusing on renewable energy infrastructure as a form of horizontal linkage: shared infrastructure that can serve both mining operations and surrounding communities. It examines how renewable energy developed for mining operations can deliver benefits beyond the mine site. When planned deliberately, shared renewable energy systems can improve electricity access, strengthen public services, support local businesses, create jobs, and contribute to long-term economic diversification in mining regions. 

The publication sets out practical policy recommendations for governments to better align mining, energy, climate, infrastructure, education, and development objectives. It highlights the importance of assessing existing energy infrastructure, strengthening policy coherence, promoting skills development, enabling public–private partnerships, planning for mine closure, and ensuring that women and marginalized groups can access the opportunities created by renewable energy investments. 

By integrating renewable energy infrastructure into local content policy, governments can help turn mining-related investments into lasting community assets that support inclusive, low-carbon, and resilient development.

This study looks at the fuel pricing arrangements of different countries around the world in order to provide Indonesia with information that may help inform the development of its own domestic pricing policy, particularly with an eye toward strengthening and enforcing the new pricing mechanism introduced in 2015 at the same time as identifying measures to safeguard consumers from the impacts of fuel price volatility and potential high future fuel prices. 

The study’s objectives are as follows:

• To set out the baseline for understanding Indonesia’s current pricing system, previous experiences with non-ad hoc pricing and possible legal constraints around market energy pricing.
• To summarize existing knowledge about international pricing systems in a format that is targeted at the current needs of Indonesian policy-makers.
• To identify policy options for Indonesia to consider based on international experience.

Single-use plastics are often lightweight and inexpensive to produce, but their disposal creates substantial costs for waste management systems, wastewater treatment facilities, litter cleanup efforts, and ecosystems. Despite growing concern about plastic pollution, limited data exists on the quantities and costs associated with specific single-use plastic products in Canada. 

This report examines eight commonly used single-use plastic items and estimates their economic impacts across waste management pathways and ecosystem goods and services. The analysis draws on municipal waste data, wastewater sector input, citizen science litter data sets, and ecosystem impact research to provide a comprehensive assessment of the costs associated with plastic pollution. 

The report also presents a practical tool for municipalities and other authorities to estimate and track plastic waste management costs, supporting evidence-based decision making and policy development.

Education is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change—but also critical to building the resilience of communities. Human-induced climate change is already disrupting learning and destroying infrastructure, disproportionately affecting the most fragile education systems. To build a climate-resilient education sector, adaptation must be at the centre of decision making. This requires coordination, collaboration, and action among education and climate change actors, which are core aspects of the NAP process. 

Developed in partnership with Save the Children, this report aims to support NAP teams to consider the education sector in the NAP process. It provides an overview of a climate-resilient education system, particularly as it relates to children, and highlights enabling factors and key considerations for including the education sector at each stage of the NAP process. 

The report was developed through desk-based research, a review of evidence, tools, and approaches used in the Climate Smart Education Systems Initiative and by the NAP Global Network, and case studies.

Critical minerals are crucial for the green and digital transitions. Given China’s significant role in global mineral value chains, improving its sustainability standards and performance could translate into significant social and environmental improvements across the entire sector. 

This report examines the ESG practices and standards of Chinese critical mineral companies operating overseas. It finds that while Chinese companies have strengthened ESG practices in the mineral sector in recent years—including through improved supply chain risk management and due diligence—significant gaps remain compared to international best practices. 

To close these gaps, the report provides a series of policy recommendations for the Chinese government. These include accelerating the alignment of its standards with leading global benchmarks on ESG in mining and establishing bilateral technical cooperation mechanisms and research centres with key resource-rich countries.

Public procurement is a powerful yet underused tool for shaping markets. In the European Union, it represents around 15% of GDP and is linked to roughly 11% of greenhouse gas emissions—giving public authorities strong leverage to influence how companies compete and what kinds of products and business models succeed. At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, industrial rivalry, and climate change, this market power is becoming more important. In that context, local content requirements (LCRs), or Made in Europe requirements, have been one of the central themes of the debate on procurement reform. 

Well-designed LCRs can support resilience, clean industry, and low-carbon markets. When combined with robust environmental requirements, they can help reduce emissions, improve circularity, and create lead markets for more sustainable products—particularly in heavy industries such as steel and cement, where decarbonization has progressed slowly despite years of effort. But if LCRs are too broad or too rigid, they can increase costs, reduce competition, add legal and administrative complexity, and create tensions with international trade partners. Origin criteria alone, without ambitious environmental standards, risk entrenching high-emitting producers rather than driving clean industrial transformation. 

The report examines how domestic preference rules can be defined and how they are used in India, Canada, and China. The report maps their main risks and opportunities, identifies the conditions under which LCRs can effectively support clean lead markets, and explores their application in the steel, concrete, and clean technology sectors. The report concludes with four recommendations for policy-makers on advancing Made in Europe requirements in the context of the Industrial Accelerator Act and the future EU Public Procurement Act.

Across the Canadian Prairies, water carries memory, identity, responsibility, and life. Yet the voices of those most deeply connected to it are often absent from climate and water policy discussions. 

Through Stories of Resilience: Water, the Natural Infrastructure for Water Solutions (NIWS) initiative and The Resilience Institute (TRI) are helping change that. This digital story map brings forward the experiences of Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people from across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba—sharing deeply personal reflections on water, climate change, stewardship, and resilience. 

The stories reveal water as far more than infrastructure or a resource to manage. Participants speak of rivers as lifelines, lakes as relatives, and water as a living being that connects families, cultures, and generations. They also describe the growing pressures facing Prairie communities, from drought and wildfire to ecosystem loss and changing watersheds, while highlighting community-led responses rooted in Indigenous knowledge, restoration, and care for the land. 

For the International Institute for Sustainable Development, this work is part of a broader effort to support more inclusive and resilient water futures across the Prairies. By elevating voices too often overlooked in environmental decision making, Stories of Resilience: Water challenges us to rethink our relationship with water—and with each other. 

Like tributaries flowing into a larger watershed, each story contributes to a growing collective understanding of what resilience can look like in a changing climate.

Significant infrastructure deficits in municipalities across North America indicate that infrastructure is being expanded at an unsustainable rate. At the same time, governments are faced with the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

This report examines how urban development patterns influence both the fiscal and environmental costs of car-oriented infrastructure. Low-density growth patterns often generate insufficient tax revenue to cover their full life-cycle infrastructure costs, contributing to long-term municipal liabilities, while also reinforcing car dependency and higher emissions. The research explores how fiscal impact analysis, infrastructure planning, and land-use policy can be better integrated to support more financially and environmentally sustainable development outcomes.