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Nature is our greatest ally, supporting a positive balance between all life on Earth. We must invest in it to recover and restore our planet.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“Nature-based solutions have emerged as a critical strategy in addressing the complex challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, which is the third most potentially damaging risk to human survival.”

These solutions harness the power of ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of global warming. In a region that is home to 40% of global biodiversity, including 50% of the world’s tropical rainforests and 30% of our available fresh water, a significant number of broad scale, critical nature positive projects in Latin America and the Caribbean are being supported by the Inter American Development Bank.

The Latin America and Caribbean’s partner of choice, believes that nature can play an important role in supporting a wide range of development and economic strategies.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“The bank provides support to countries to include natural capital in their policies and investment strategies, and also drives financial investment in the market by supporting enabling environments and innovative transactions. Despite the potential for nature-based solutions to generate attractive returns and provide significant cost savings, these financing models remain largely underutilized.”

Strategies that leverage private finance include green bonds, blended market rate and concessional loans, land based funding initiatives, insurance policies and endowments.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“One of the key factors often overlooked in investment analysis is that natural capital is directly connected to human livelihoods. Without a healthy environment to sustain us, all of our systems will eventually fail. That is why the IDB supports the economic valuation of the benefits of natural capital flows and works to define the multiple benefits of nature across the economic and social arenas where impacts occur.”

Nature-based solutions are also inclusive and culturally relevant. Indigenous and local communities often play a key role in their management, ensuring that ancestral knowledge and practices are respected and integrated. And these solutions work across a range of habitats and systems. In sequestering carbon dioxide, for example, forests, wetlands and grasslands are highly effective carbon sinks, capturing and storing carbon in plants and soils.

Ecosystems like mangroves and coral reefs act as natural barriers, protecting coastal communities from rising sea levels and extreme weather events, and at the same time, they provide mitigation benefits. Marine ecosystem sequestration is known as blue carbon.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“The IDB supported conservation and protection of a blue carbon project in Panama. Preservation of the natural capital in mangroves and wetlands along Parita and Panama Bays in order to support coastal resilience, habitats and livelihoods. A wide range of stakeholders from the government drafting its NDC, to large infrastructure providers like the airport and coastal developers who benefit from storm surge risk reduction, to local communities who benefit from improved fish stocks and the incorporation of conservation education in local schools benefited.”

Research was also funded to map the mangrove and bird species as an ongoing indicator of ecosystem health.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“The bank was instrumental in supporting an innovative financing model to protect the largest coastal reef system in the Western Hemisphere, the Mesoamerican reef.”

This benchmark project, funded by partners, was a multi-faceted solution involving governments, communities and the private sector, all working together to provide capacity building, scientific research and monitoring, data analysis, disaster recovery insurance recognition and underwriting of the reef as a natural infrastructure.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“IDB’s groundbreaking report into the economic value of the reef using natural capital accounting frameworks, also included a granular valuation of coastline protection, fishery, tourism and non-use values in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and Belize.”

With IDB’s support, Ecuador recently completed the world’s largest debt for nature conversion that will allow it to allocate resources for long term marine conservation in the Galapagos Islands to promote greater sustainability and improve the quality of life for Ecuadorians. The IDB was the first multilateral development bank to support debt for nature transactions, using policy based guarantees in both Barbados and Ecuador, and is committed to supporting countries in leveraging finance for both Paris and Global Biodiversity Framework Goals.

Gregory Watson
Inter-American Development Bank

“The health of natural ecosystems everywhere directly impacts human survival and enhances profits. Investing in nature is not only an ethical responsibility, but also a smart economic decision. It pays off.”

Protecting biodiversity is not just an investment in our planet’s future, it’s our ultimate life insurance.