Nature-Positive Solutions

Activities

This objective will be achieved through the following activities:

1. Conserve agrobiodiversity: Developing nature-positive solutions for conservation of interlinked agrobiodiversity, water and soils systems, focusing on the nexus of agrobiodiversity conservation and the water and soil resource management critical to reversing biodiversity loss. 
2. Manage biodiversity, water and soil: Managing biodiversity and other natural resources in a sustainable, nature-positive way, working with smallholder communities to improve production systems, introducing solutions and innovations around biodiversity, water and soil management. 
3. Enable resilient restoration: Promoting nature-positive solutions as cost-efficiency models for community land restoration by providing the evidence base and capacity to monitor and quantify ecosystem service delivery and maximize efficiency to help local restoration stakeholders establish innovative solutions that attract investment and break the degradation cycle.
4. Create nature-positive recycling solutions: Educating a wide range of stakeholders on nature-positive solutions for a circular economy approach to rural waste management,ensuring that recycling is used effectively by SMEs to generate increased resources that benefit poor farming households in rural areas and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 
5. Build an engaging and enabling environment: Engaging key actors in creating an enabling environment for nature-positive solutions by a) researching the cost of food, including the hidden costs of women’s labor and b) valuing and shaping different incentives, and c) building mainstreaming implementation and scaling capacity.

Engagement

This Initiative prioritizes the following countries: Burkina Faso, Colombia, India, Kenya and Vietnam. Additionally, the Initiative will continue CGIAR work on nature-positive solutions in Burundi, Cameroon, Côte D’Ivoire, Maylasia and Peru.  

Outcomes

Proposed 3-year outcomes include:

1. Women and men smallholder farmers, local communities and national agricultural research systems (NARS) use nature-positive solutions, stress-tested and validated by the Initiative to improve landscape-scale management of biodiversity for food and agriculture via the farm-scale entry points of water, soil, waste and land restoration.  
2. Women and men (including smallholder farmers) use Initiative innovations and pathways to engage more directly in, and benefit more equitably from, value chains based on the outputs of biodiversity conservation, innovative rural waste management technologies and circular economy principles.  
3. NARS and other development actors systematically adopt nature-positive participatory, multidisciplinary approaches that make research more impactful, relevant to local agrifood system contexts and smallholder needs, and sustainable through local actor take-up. 
4. National and subnational policymakers acknowledge that true-cost accounting should and will be applied to agrifood system-related policy formation. 
5. Public and private investment actors use Initiative evidence, tools and methodologies to gain a better understanding of the business case for nature-positive solutions.

Impact

Projected impacts and benefits include:

	ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & BIODIVERSITY The Initiative aims to achieve a 30% increase in food, land, and water productivity, a reversal of soil degradation, and a 50% increase in systems biodiversity. It will see more than 916,000 hectares of forest protected from deforestation and restored, and more than  1.8 million hectares of land  under improved management.
	NUTRITION, HEALTH & FOOD SECURITY Through the Initiative, more than 69 million people, including farmers and consumers, will have access to a broader food basket, as more crops, particularly nuts and fruits, will be produced and consumed. Women and children will particularly benefit from nutrient-dense crops and varieties.
	POVERTY REDUCTION, LIVELIHOODS & JOBS The Initiative aims to achieve at least 20% increased income from nature-positive solutions-focused value chains, benefiting more than 69 million people. It will create jobs and enhance income opportunities, particularly for women and youth, through a number of value chains related to seeds, crops, fruit trees, waste, in addition to payment for ecosystem services schemes and public procurement.
	GENDER EQUALITY, YOUTH & SOCIAL INCLUSION The Initiative will incorporate and reflect the needs of women and indigenous people. In addition, value chain development, training, and value chain access/participation will target women and youth in particular. Third, women will be actively involved in the community steering committees to oversee implementation. Women and youth will also be targeted to manage farmer-led seed systems, benefiting more than 33.3 million women and 11.5 million youth.
	CLIMATE ADAPTATION & MITIGATION Communities will improve their adaptation through the characterization of diversity for climate-related traits and adoption of nature-positive practices by farmers, reducing their vulnerability to climate shocks. Improvements to restoration and soil management, as well as improved recycling and value chains, will create carbon sinks and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, averting more than 83 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions. Finally, payment for ecosystem services and other schemes will provide correctly aligned incentives to maintain forests and trees, contributing both to adaptation and mitigation.

Projected benefits are a way to illustrate reasonable orders of magnitude for impacts which could arise as a result of the impact pathways set out in the Initiative’s theories of change. In line with the 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy, Initiatives contribute to these impact pathways, along with other partners and stakeholders. CGIAR does not deliver impact alone. These projections therefore estimate plausible levels of impact to which CGIAR, with partners, contribute. They do not estimate CGIAR’s attributable share of the different impact pathways.

Partners

The Nature-Positive Initiative has a wide array of demand, innovation and scaling partners, including: in Kenya, Vihiga County Government, World Wildlife Foundation, the Inter-sectoral Forum on Agro-biodiversity and Agroecology (ISFAA), Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and the Miti Alliance; in India, Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) Development Research Foundation; in Vietnam, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS), Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD); in Colombia, Cooperación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuario (AGROSAVIA) and Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD).

Header photo: Photo by R. Ziade/ICARDA.

Following an inception period, this summary has been updated to respond to recommendations from the Independent Science for Development Council on this CGIAR Initiative’s proposal. Initiatives are considered “operational” once they receive funding and activities commence.