On October 12 and 13, 2022, the International Institute for Sustainable Development hosted the Forum on Natural Infrastructure (NI) Performance and Metrics in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The forum brought together leading experts and practitioners working to advance NI and nature-based solutions, with a focus on the Canadian Prairies. Together, participants discussed key challenges, opportunities, and technical considerations related to building a better business case for water-related NI across Canada’s Prairies. Participants included funders of NI, scientists and researchers, watershed groups, different levels of government (local, provincial, federal), and Indigenous Peoples, among others.

Day 1 of the 2-day forum included presentations, discussions, and breakout sessions related to advancing our collective understanding of the business case for NI solutions and how to deliver at a scale appropriate to the existing and future water challenges on the Prairies. Day 2 continued on the road, visiting NI and hybrid infrastructure sites in southern Manitoba, including the Ste. Geneviève retention pond, Grand Marais Lagoon, Brokenhead Wetland Ecological Reserve, Red River Floodway, and several urban sites within Winnipeg, including the John Hirsch Place soil cells, Human Rights Museum green roof, Sage Creek naturalized stormwater ponds, and East St. Paul floating treatment wetlands. At each site, attendees learned about their function and the metrics used to understand and evaluate performance.

The eight most significant findings and actions suggested by participants of the forum to strengthen the business case for NI and, ultimately, to accelerate the adoption of NI across Canada’s Prairies, can be found within this report.

“Loss and damage” refers to the observed impacts and projected risks of climate change that go beyond what countries, communities, or ecosystems can adapt to. Averting, minimizing, and addressing loss and damage is about protecting and strengthening the resilience of communities, livelihoods, and ecosystems in the face of climate change, ensuring they are safeguarded for future generations.

The National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process is fundamentally about minimizing loss and damage through adaptation action. NAP documents are relevant to conversations about loss and damage because they:

• Contain information and analysis that facilitates an understanding of country-specific losses and damages.
• Provide insights into countries’ understanding of the relationships between adaptation and disaster risk reduction and disaster risk management.
• Include concrete actions to minimize losses and damages.

Adaptation communications (AdComs) present a means for communicating a clear and up-to-date overview of adaptation. As one of several reporting instruments under the UNFCCC, climate change decision-makers are carefully considering how an AdCom fits into their national approach to adaptation planning and implementation. In preparing an AdCom, countries should leverage the outputs and results of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process—and experience shows this can be equally true whether a country is in the early stages of the NAP process or several years into implementing its NAP.

The purpose of this report is to highlight opportunities for countries to leverage the results of NAP processes for preparing AdComs, making strategic use of an AdCom for boosting the profile and visibility of adaptation progress and needs without creating undue additional reporting burden. It draws on experiences from the NAP Global Network’s support to 22 countries to build on their NAP processes to prepare their first AdComs.

This report explores the range of innovative financial instruments that could be used to scale up finance for adaptation. Drawing in part on insights gained from case studies from Kenya, Nepal, and Peru, the report identifies four interconnected lessons regarding the use of innovative financial instruments for climate change adaptation in developing countries:

1. Blended finance arrangements that bring together concessional public capital and private capital have been and will continue to be the means through which private finance supports many adaptation projects.
2. Packaging adaptation projects alongside projects that generate revenue is a way to increase flows to adaptation. As many adaptation projects do not provide a clear potential to generate sufficient revenue, packing them along with projects that generate other benefits—such as reductions in carbon emissions—may increase their attractiveness to private investors.
3. Some financing arrangements that would be considered standard in one country or market could be considered innovative in another market. “Innovation” therefore does not necessarily mean the creation of new instruments but rather can involve the application of tested arrangements to a new sector, for a new purpose, or in a country where they have not been used before.
4. In some geographic regions, grant and concessional finance from a public entity is the most suitable form of finance for certain adaptation projects. These projects should be identified and set aside when communicating with potential private sector investors.

Overall, there is a greater need to diversity how existing instruments, such as credit guarantees, are being used and to focus on their use in sectors where there is greater opportunity to meet the revenue generation expectations of private financiers. Through innovative approaches to combining existing instruments and matching them to specific projects, there is greater potential to increase private sector financing for adaptation.
 

Thessaly is an agricultural region in Greece that faces frequent floods, water scarcity, declining water quality, soil degradation, and loss of natural habitats. The region is expected to get hotter and drier as climate changes, and flooding is projected to continue in the future which will exacerbate water management challenges.

We used the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) methodology to holistically assess the social and environmental outcomes of the NBI compared to grey infrastructure that provides similar flood risk reduction benefits. The assessment combines a spatially explicit analysis with a system dynamics model to quantify the outcomes of three scenarios:

1. Nature-based infrastructure (NBI): Riparian forests and floodplain restoration are implemented.
2. Hybrid infrastructure: Riparian forests and floodplain restoration are implemented, and small dams are built upstream to reduce sedimentation.
3. Grey infrastructure: New dikes are built along the river channel.

Key results:

• The NBI intervention has the highest benefit-to-cost ratio over the next 25 years. The benefit-to-cost ratio of the NBI is 2.9, compared to 2.4 for the hybrid and 1.5 for the grey infrastructure.
• Even without considering the avoided flood damages, the additional benefits, such as increased agriculture production and avoided costs of emissions, are sufficient to justify the investment in the NBI. The net benefits would be even larger when considering avoided flood losses, particularly from extreme events.
• The carbon storage value of NBI, which is equal to EUR 12.8 million, is, on its own, larger than the costs of the NBI (EUR 6.8 million) and of the hybrid infrastructure (9.3 million). The NBI would also improve habitat quality and support biodiversity, which could provide recreational opportunities and improve agricultural productivity.

The report is complemented by technical appendices with methodological details about the system dynamics model and spatial analysis that were developed for the valuation.

With the ubiquitous use of plastics in modern societies, plastic pollution has become one of the defining environmental challenges of our time. Governments across the world have already recognized this, undertaking a variety of measures to curb the reliance on the plastics and plastic products that they consider to be the most harmful, or the least necessary, and setting in motion international cooperation processes at both the UN and the WTO to find collective solutions.

As these international discussions proceed, this report aims to shed light on the trade-related measures that have already been taken and notified by WTO members in their efforts to reduce plastic pollution. It provides a detailed examination of these existing measures and offers suggestions on how governments across the world could build on them as they consider their next individual or collective steps in addressing the plastics crisis.

The report starts by providing a general overview of the trade-related plastic pollution-reduction measures notified by WTO members, including their distribution by region, development status, types of targeted products, as well as types of policy measures. The report then dives into more detail on the most common approaches taken by members, with a particular focus on bans. It zooms in on a number of concrete examples, illustrating the variety of ways in which members have chosen to establish such prohibitions, in particular regarding the plastic products that are targeted and how such prohibitions are constructed. Some of the less frequently notified kinds of measures are also highlighted.

Based on this mapping, the report then concludes by highlighting three broad objectives that policy-makers should pursue as they contemplate and design their next steps in the fight against plastic pollution:

• Enhanced transparency and experience sharing: making existing efforts to reduce plastic pollution more visible to other governments and generating more learning opportunities.
• Geographic expansion and best practices: exploring whether well-established types of measures could be applied in places where they do not exist today and whether best practices can be derived from existing experiences in applying them.
• Thematic scope expansion: exploring whether new areas of policy intervention can be identified to deliver meaningful results in tackling plastic pollution, in particular by targeting parts of the plastics economy that are currently not (or rarely) targeted, but deserve to be.

In 2022, countries created at COP 26 the Glasgow-Sharm-el Sheikh (GlaSS) work program on the GGA, a 2-year program aimed at exploring how the GGA can be operationalised. Additionally, countries agreed at COP 27 to use the last year of the GlaSS to finalize a GGA framework with a view to adopting it at COP 28. The forthcoming GGA framework provides an opportunity to define a global MEL system for assessing collective progress on adaptation. This is important to increase visibility of adaptation globally, inform directions for finance and improve adaptation action worldwide. This report first provides an overview of key concepts and elements needed under MEL systems, along with examples and relevant conceptualizations for the GGA for actors to advance their understanding and views of a prospective GGA framework by COP 28.

Solarizing irrigation has huge potential. Cost-effective and reliable irrigation can significantly improve farmer incomes and well-being. Shifting away from highly subsidized grid electricity can relieve financial pressure on electricity distribution companies—a review of tariff orders in 17 states and Union Territories found that 75% of all such subsidies go to agriculture. Furthermore, solar irrigation can help India shift to clean energy, reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, care must be taken to implement it sustainably. There are complicated interconnections between water, energy, and food—often called the “water–energy–food nexus”—where interventions in one area can cause unexpected impacts in another.

This guidebook has been developed in cooperation with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. It is dedicated to supporting state policy-makers and agencies in sustainably implementing grid-connected solar power at a substation level, thereby “solarizing” the supply used by farmers connected to the substation. We refer to this as “decentralized solar power plants for irrigation,” which includes components A and C(FLS) of PM-KUSUM. Given the relative lack of experience with these models in India, we aim to bring together essential guidance on implementing them effectively. We also examine sustainability, identifying best practices for maximizing social outcomes and groundwater resources. Based on an initial needs assessment, this guidebook covers the following:

1. Context: What are these models, and what are their potential impacts?
2. Financing: What can states do to reduce the costs of financing?
3. Implementation design and coordination: How can specific inter- and intra-departmental coordination mechanisms improve outcomes?
4. Learning by doing: While states prioritize immediate deployment, how can they integrate pilots of innovative approaches for maximizing sustainability to inform ongoing improvements?

As a guidebook, this publication is based on the best available evidence, but it is not a research paper. We focus on practical suggestions for state policy-makers and implementing agencies with illustrative examples, drawing on a combination of secondary and primary research, including:

• Reviews of existing policy research literature
• 32 in-depth interviews with state and central officials, financiers, and policy experts
• Case studies on state schemes in Maharashtra and Punjab (see Appendix)
• A background paper on agrivoltaics based on literature review and stakeholder consultations (provided as a supplementary to this guidebook)
• Various multistakeholder round tables with policy-makers and experts on solar irrigation

This guidance is focused only on components related to decentralized solar power plants for irrigation. It is intended to directly assist state policy-makers with implementing PM-KUSUM and be relevant for any solar irrigation scheme, including future policies once PM-KUSUM is completed. For guidance on other forms of solar irrigation—stand-alone and grid-connected pumps—see our separate guidebook Implementing Solar Irrigation Sustainably: A Guidebook for State Policy-Makers on Maximizing the Social and Environmental Benefits From Solar Pump Schemes, published in 2021.

Supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

In the future, many countries, including India, may witness growing competition for land resources between agriculture and renewable energy. Agrivoltaics—the simultaneous use of land for both agriculture and photovoltaic (PV) power generation—offers a potential solution. Studies show potential for increasing crop yield and panel efficiency, making agrivoltaics an attractive option for farmers and solar developers. Agrivoltaics has grown swiftly across the world in recent years, and India is taking the first steps in its adoption, with more than a dozen pilot projects having been deployed across the country.

This paper reports the experiences of stakeholders (power distribution companies, agricultural universities, private solar PV developers, and farmers) who have implemented agrivoltaics pilots across India. The objective is to bring together evidence from research studies and learnings from pilot projects through interviews with relevant stakeholders to summarize the current status, implementation challenges, and opportunities for commercialization and scale-up of agrivoltaics. The paper aims to inform future policy actions and studies by bringing out key guiding observations and addressing key research questions.

The findings in this paper are designed to support state agencies, developers, and other stakeholders in the faster adoption of agrivoltaics by providing policy recommendations, proposing business models, as well as financial and technical transitions mechanism.

This paper is a supplementary companion to a comprehensive guidebook on how to deploy small-scale decentralized solar power plants under India’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme. The guidebook provides practical guidance to states on how they can begin to pilot agrivoltaics in their first phases of deployment under PM-KUSUM, which explicitly states that it can be used to support agrivoltaics.

Supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Barranquilla is Colombia’s fourth largest city, and population expansion in and around the city has created numerous environmental problems. For example, encroachment in the Mallorquín Swamp on the northern edge of Barranquilla has made residents more vulnerable to climate change and harmed livelihoods. Mangroves in the swamp have historically provided significant value by mitigating floods, protecting biodiversity and fisheries, storing carbon, and supporting tourism. However, urban development and waste disposal have damaged the ecosystem and limited the swamp’s capacity to provide these important services.

We conducted a sustainable asset valuation (SAVi) assessment of nature-based infrastructure (NBI) in the Mallorquín Swamp. Throughout the analysis, we engaged with World Resources Institute Colombia and Barranquilla Verde (the city’s environmental authority). The assessment incorporates a spatially explicit analysis with a system dynamics model to quantify the economic, environmental, and social impacts of mangrove restoration in Barranquilla. We used an integrated cost-benefit analysis to assess the monetized social, economic, and environmental outcomes of restoration over 20 years.

Key results:

• Restoration can counteract degradation and address environmental concerns.
• NBI in the Mallorquín Swamp creates more value for society at a lower cost than the grey infrastructure alternatives.
• The restored swamp could support the local economy and provide significant climate adaptation benefits.
• Supporting the local economy by providing a sustainable source of income increases the net value of the investment.
• NBI can be an effective long-term climate adaptation strategy.
• Investing in ecotourism infrastructure has a strong impact on the financial viability of the intervention.
• NBI is preferable to grey infrastructure from a financing perspective.

The report is complemented by technical appendices with methodological details about the system dynamics model and spatial analysis that were developed for the valuation.