Publication: Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience: A Guideline for Project Developers
Loading...
Other Files
1,512 downloads
Date
2023-05-12
ISSN
Published
2023-05-12
Editor(s)
Abstract
This document aims to guide the design, implementation, and use of studies to value the benefits and costs of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) for climate resilience projects. Reliable quantification of the costs and benefits of NBS for climate resilience can facilitate further mainstreaming of these interventions by articulating the value proposition of NBS across sectors, improve impact evaluation, and for identifying additional funding and financing for projects. This report provides an overview of methods and approaches, along with a decision framework to guide the design of NBS cost and benefit assessment. The decision framework presented should enable project developers to come up with a cost-effective approach for quantifying the benefits and costs of NBS that is effective and convincing in the context of climate resilience projects. To illustrate this in practical applications, eight case studies from World Bank projects are also included to better show how different valuation methods are applied in the field.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Van Zanten, Boris Ton; Gutierrez Goizueta, Gonzalo; Brander, Luke Mckinnon; Gonzalez Reguero, Borja; Griffin, Robert; Macleod, Kavita Kapur; Alves Beloqui, Alida Ivana; Midgley, Amelia; Herrera Garcia, Luis Diego; Jongman, Brenden. 2023. Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience: A Guideline for Project Developers. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39811”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience in the World Bank Portfolio(Washington DC, 2023-03-21)Countries are facing increasingly complex climate-related challenges, which undermine resilience and require integrated and innovative solutions. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged as cost-effective alternatives to conventional gray infrastructure, delivering greater resilience in the longer term and providing a host of additional benefits. NBSs are defined as actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, which address social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being, ecosystem services and resilience and biodiversity benefits. NBSs that are used with the explicit objective of reducing climate and disaster risks are called NBS for climate resilience. Related terms could include eco-DRR (disaster risk reduction), NBS for disaster risk management, or ecosystem-based adaptation. However, NBSs for climate resilience also provide other benefits such as provision of food or drinking water or opportunities for recreation and climate regulation. NBSs for climate resilience are applied across different geographies. As GPNBS scales-up its effort to provide targeted support to World Bank task teams and clients, monitoring and tracking the NBS footprint in the World Bank’s portfolio will remain a key tool. This paper aims to inform World Bank and GFDRR leadership, donors, clients, and the global community on the World Bank’s progress in mainstreaming NBS for climate resilience, and to inform decisions on targeting capacity building efforts and technical support to operations.Publication Nature-Based Solutions for Improving Resilience in the Caribbean(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-01)Sustainable management of environment and natural resources is essential for the long-term and sustainable growth of key economic sectors, such as fisheries, forestry or tourism, across the Caribbean. In addition to being important generators of GDP and beneficial to the human well-being overall, natural resources also provide a range of ecosystem services that play a critical role in the Caribbean countries’ efforts to reduce disaster risks and adapt to mounting climate change risks. The region is facing a number of challenges in this area, including the climate change impacts, limited access to financing, and narrow fiscal space, among others. Such challenges are being exacerbated by the unprecedented health, economic and social impacts of COVID-19 pandemic. However, with great challenges come great opportunities, including to grow and shift the development pathway into a green recovery, based on the richness of the natural resources and biodiversity that this region possesses.Publication A Catalogue of Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Resilience(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-08)Cities worldwide are facing resilience challenges as climate risks interact with urbanization, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, poverty, and rising socioeconomic inequality. Extreme precipitation events, flooding, heatwaves, and droughts are causing economic losses, social insecurity, and affecting wellbeing. Over time, urban resilience challenges are expected to grow, driven by processes such as urbanization, land use, and climate change. Whereas climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of some natural hazards, urbanization can also lead to higher exposure of people and assets in cities. More than half of the global population lives in cities, and more than seventy percent are expected to do so by 2050. Nature-based solutions are approaches that use nature and natural processes for delivering infrastructure, services, and integrative solutions to meet the rising challenge of urban resilience. The catalogue of Nature-based solutions for urban resilience has been developed as a guidance document to support the growing demand for NBS by enabling an initial identification of potential investments in nature-based solutions. The document is structured as follows: Chapter 2 describes generic principles for integrating NBS into urban environments. Chapter 3 provides a reader’s guide and holds the Catalogue of the fourteen NBS families.Publication Valuing the Benefits of Nature-Based Solutions(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021)Floods are the most frequent of all-natural hazards and responsible for causing more damages than any other disasters. Globally, floods are estimated to have affected more than 2 billion people between 1998 and 2018, accounting for 45 percent of all people affected by disasters during that period with an estimated 142,088 fatalities. The immediate impacts of flooding include the loss of human life, livelihoods, damage to property, destruction of crops, loss of livestock, disruption of services, and deterioration of health conditions owing to waterborne diseases, among others. The direct economic losses caused by flooding over the last decade are estimated at US656 billion dollars, although these are systematically under-reported and actual values are likely much higher. When accounting for intangible impacts on human well-being, natural disasters are thought to cost the global economy more than US520 billion dollars a year. This report outlines a comprehensive framework for valuing the benefits associated with NbS for IUFM to facilitate the identification of appropriate and sustainable financing mechanisms to realize those values. Traditional approaches of assessing the benefits of urban flood management have been focused on avoided losses due to reductions in the probability of flooding. A benefit to this approach is that it is simple to calculate and to explain to decision makers. It can also provide information regarding the optimal level of flood risk reduction associated to the direct intervention cost. However, such traditional approaches do not reflect the full range of social, environmental and economic benefits that can be realized by NbS for IUFM. Broader recognition of these benefits, and an evaluation of their value under different circumstances, provides the foundation for capturing non-market values and leveraging private sector and community financing options. The approach described herein builds on the ‘Principles for Valuing Water’ articulated by the High-Level Panel on Water convened by the United Nations and the World Bank Group and includes three common types of flooding (i.e. fluvial, pluvial and coastal) through a five step process.Publication The Role of Nature-based Solutions in Disaster Risk Management in Fragile, Conflict and Violence-Affected Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-20)The World Bank (WB) estimates that, by 2030, up to two-thirds of the global extreme poor will be living in fragile and conflict-affected situations. Of the top 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change, 14 are considered by the WB as fragile and conflict-affected. Households affected by conflict experience greater economic losses and longer recovery time in the aftermath of a disaster. NBS is an umbrella term for a set of interventions that seek to protect, manage, and/or restore natural systems, while addressing multiple development goals such as climate and disaster risk resilience, economic and social prosperity, food security and biodiversity conservation. By providing targeted support and expertise, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) is instrumental in overcoming the unique challenges of FCV contexts, ensuring that NBS interventions are not only feasible but also effective in building resilience and stability in these vulnerable regions.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication At Your Service?: The Promise of Services-led Growth in Uzbekistan(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-07)In Uzbekistan, the services sector accounts for more than half of all jobs and has been central to the process of structural transformation over the past three decades. In the past decade, the growth of Uzbekistan’s services exports has lagged behind its manufactures' exports while FDI greenfield announcements to both sectors have been even. The growth of the services sector in the past five years was driven by social services, mostly reflecting increased public spending. This report groups the services sector into four categories based on their skill intensity, the extent of their linkages with other sectors, and their tradability in international markets: low-skilled consumer services, low-skilled enabling services , global innovator services. Of these groups, social services accounted for three-fourths of employment growth in the services sector between 2017–2022. These services also experienced relatively high rates of labor productivity growth, which was largely driven by higher public spending on wages and salaries.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Spring 2025: Accelerating Growth through Entrepreneurship, Technology Adoption, and Innovation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-23)Business dynamism and economic growth in Europe and Central Asia have weakened since the late 2000s, with productivity growth driven largely by resource reallocation between firms and sectors rather than innovation. To move up the value chain, countries need to facilitate technology adoption, stronger domestic competition, and firm-level innovation to build a more dynamic private sector. Governments should move beyond broad support for small- and medium-sized enterprises and focus on enabling the most productive firms to expand and compete globally. Strengthening competition policies, reducing the presence of state-owned enterprises, and ensuring fair market access are crucial. Limited availability of long-term financing and risk capital hinders firm growth and innovation. Economic disruptions are a shock in the short term, but they provide an opportunity for implementing enterprise and structural reforms, all of which are essential for creating better-paying jobs and helping countries in the region to achieve high-income status.Publication The Mexican Social Protection System in Health(World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01)With a population of 113 million and a per-capita Gross Domestic Product, or GDP of US$10,064 (current U.S. dollars), Mexico is one of the largest and highest-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The country has benefited from sustained economic growth during the last decade, which was temporarily interrupted by the financial and economic crisis. Real GDP is projected to grow 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively (International Monetary Fund, or IMF 2012). Despite this growth, poverty in the country remains high; with half of the population living below the national poverty line. The country is also highly heterogeneous, with large socioeconomic differences across states and across urban and rural areas. In 2010, while the extreme poverty ratio in the Federal District and the states of Colima and Nuevo Leon was below 3 percent, in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca it was 25 percent or higher. These large regional differences are also found in other indicators of well-being, such as years of schooling, housing conditions, and access to social services. This case study assesses key features and achievements of the Social Protection System in Health (Sistema de Proteccion Social en Salud) in Mexico, and particularly of its main pillar, Popular Health Insurance (Seguro Popular, PHI). It analyzes the contribution of this policy to the establishment and implementation of universal health coverage in Mexico. In 2003, with the reform of the General Health Law, the PHI was institutionalized as a subsidized health insurance scheme open to the population not covered by the social security schemes. Today, the PHI covers all of its intended affiliates, about 52 million people