Solutions based on nature or 'greenwashing'?

“Only life generates the conditions for life”, the biologist Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente elegantly synthesized.

I grew up listening to his father, Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, while he watched with fascination the eagles, herons, roe deer and trout, here in my Ribera del Duero.

To protect nature, like anything else, you have to love it, get to know it, be in direct and frequent contact.

Coexistence teaches us our interdependence.

Thus, reintroducing nature in cities is a necessary part of the equation, as is rural repopulation, since most of the natural heritage is in the agricultural world.

Apart from their awe-inspiring beauty and inherent right to exist, ecosystems provide services that sustain our species and all life on Earth: air, water, food, health, well-being, culture,

Biodiversity is the bunch of keys that opens the paths of adaptation to some impacts of climate change.

And I say to some, because at the speed at which they are going, there will be no possible adaptation without urgent and drastic mitigation.

Resilience is the ability to adapt, but to achieve this you have to reduce the threat.

Trees will die if heat waves and droughts multiply, and with them the shade they give us, the water they retain, not to mention the oxygen they produce, the biodiversity they harbor and the carbon they fix.

And so with everything.

The adaptation fund, famously positive conclusion of the recent COP27 in Egypt (climate), is nothing more than a mere mirage without a radical transformation of our collective behavior.

Money is useless on a dead planet.

At the North Africa summit, the potential of nature itself as a climate resilience mechanism was emphasized.

While at COP15 (biodiversity), which has just been held in Montreal, the accent has fallen on the expansion and reconnection of habitats in favor of the viability of ecosystems, as well as the rights and vital role of indigenous peoples , custodians of biodiversity for generations.

Precisely in this context of communities and their territories, Nature-Based Solutions (SBN) emerge, or the intelligent, inclusive and adaptive use of ecosystems to act against major social challenges.

The IUCN Global Standard defines them unambiguously.

A literary fable, in the form of a Letter to Mother Earth written by a wolf, lands them in our hearts: “Human, brother, we do not compete, we coexist, as we have done for millennia.

You need me, I need you.

I control the populations of herbivores so that they do not decimate your crops, nor the banks of our rivers.

You must protect the wild, our habitat.

Based on mutual respect and understanding, together, we will get ahead."

This is how he tested the amazing reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone.

The same happens with big cats, reindeer or bison, all marker species (bioindicators) of the health of their ecosystems, including the human population.

Its symbology, embedded in ancestral traditions, makes its conservation a cultural challenge that excites and engages.

How the project has hooked me

for the reinsertion of wild species in Empty Spain, which works with the local fabric for its maximum benefit.

Well, if the SBNs are so positive, why so much controversy around them in recent times?

Very simple, because of the happy

, mainly from large companies that, instead of rethinking their business model so linked to consumerism, look for the varnish that covers everything but changes nothing.

Large land grabs with sparse population density, often home to native tribes from the global South, where to plant saplings to “make up” for the damage we refuse to stop doing.

No, these are not Nature-Based Solutions.

Neither more nor less than the United Nations made it emphatically clear, as did several NGOs such as Friends of the Earth or Survival International.

Criticism yes, constructive spirit too.

The fact that there are some nefarious attempts to use the term SBN inappropriately does not mean in any way that the concept ceases to be valid, that there are no projects that do comply with the Standard and generate a positive impact, as we explained in a round table round session with IUCN and the aforementioned NGOs, organized by Ecoherencia.

In this sense, although the mitigation function of the NBS must always be complementary, never substitute, for the real reduction of emissions mentioned, the adaptation function, or more properly of resilience, in addition to the improvement of biodiversity and its multiple other benefits, yes they are undeniable exponents of the potential of the SBN.

There are no tools without users, and here is the other card against green manipulation: the imperative that all processes around the development of NBS must include all voices, affected and affected groups, and remove barriers to access to the participation of the most vulnerable groups so as not to leave anyone behind, really.

Only inclusive governance is a guarantor of the construction of equity by these solutions.

The IUCN Standard incorporates this principle as a basic pillar.

The Dublin Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss puts this into practice.

Indigenous peoples guard Avatar in the Global South, against compensatory false SBNs in the North.

Civil society, well informed and equipped with solid analytical tools,

“Ride as fast as the wind takes you.

Tell the others to come.

Tell them that Toruk Makto calls them.

Fly now, with me, sisters and brothers.

Let's show them they can't take what they want.

And that this… is our Earth.”

Jesús Iglesias Saugar, Ambassador of the European Climate Pact at SBNCLIMA 

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