Opportunities and limits of nature-based solutions: Technical workshop 

On 23 September 2025, experts from policy, finance, research, and civil society gathered in Berlin for the technical workshop "Opportunities and Limits of Nature-based Solutions", hosted by the Fair Finance Institute. The event aimed to highlight and critically discuss the risks and potentials of nature-based solutions (NbS). The focus was on how financing for NbS can be made more effective and equitable, tapping the potential to deliver on sustainable development worldwide, protect biodiversity, and empower people in countries of the Global South. Ecologic Institute's McKenna Davis opened the event with a keynote address entitled "Nature-based Solutions: More than just green? What counts, what works, and what is missing." The event was organised with funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and support from GLS Bank and Engagement Global as part of an ongoing project.

The promise and challenges of inclusively designing and effectively implementing NbS

In her keynote, McKenna Davis reminded the audience that NbS are often presented as a win-win-win for the climate, biodiversity, and society – but in practice, they are not a silver bullet. Their effectiveness depends on respecting safeguards, rights, and governance quality. Poorly designed projects can result in monocultures, exclusion, or land dispossession. Standards are essential to avoid such pitfalls and ensure that NbS deliver genuine biodiversity and social benefits, while avoiding greenwashing or misuse as offsets. McKenna also highlighted gaps in current finance flows, with only 37% of the USD 542 billion needed annually until 2030 being currently directed to NbS. While 82% of this funding comes from public budgets, private finance remains modest. Even more concerning, less than 10% of this finance reaches local actors, despite Indigenous peoples and local communities managing 22% of the world's biodiversity hotspots. She concluded by calling for: 

• Finance reform: redirecting harmful subsidies and scaling blended finance models;
• Accountability: applying robust standards, monitoring biodiversity and social outcomes, and embedding NbS in a nature-positive economy guided by the mitigation hierarchy;
• Equity and rights: securing land tenure, respecting Indigenous knowledge, and ensuring inclusive co-creation; and
• Global cooperation: learning across regions, including EU–LAC partnerships such as the INTERLACE project.

"Nature-based Solutions can be powerful catalysts for systemic transformation – but only if they are implemented with integrity and aligned with both biodiversity and social needs," McKenna concluded.

Critical voices: Risks of greenwashing and green colonialism

The second part of the workshop was dedicated to critical perspectives from science and civil society, which pointed to risks such as green colonialism and the threat to indigenous rights. In particular, the danger was emphasized that land-based carbon storage measures are declared "nature-based solutions" without providing any real benefits for nature and people or even – in the worst cases – becoming a form of "green colonialism" in which land in the Global South is used for compensation or offsetting purposes without sufficient participation, rights, or compensation for the local and indigenous communities affected. Yet, many positive and socially-beneficial examples also exist on different scales. The final part of the workshop focused on good practice examples of financing just and inclusive NbS, with practical examples and opportunities from the Global South. 

Overall, the workshop showed that nature-based solutions can be key to addressing both the biodiversity and climate ambitions while also benefiting sustainable development goals – if they are implemented in a high-quality, inclusive, and equitable manner. What matters is not the "NbS" label, but whether measures actually regenerate nature, empower people, and protect biodiversity.