Business Forum • 30 October, 2024 at 12:30 PM
With Europe facing increasingly intense floods and droughts, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and WWF are teaming up to accelerate climate adaptation in Europe by developing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) that will help to buffer societies and economies against the worsening impacts of the climate and biodiversity crises.
In a Memorandum of Understanding, the EIB and WWF pledged to promote Nature-based Solutions across Europe to tackle the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. Signed during the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity COP16 in Colombia, the four-year partnership will focus on ecosystem restoration projects linked to sectors such as agriculture, energy, and urban resilience, which will harness the power of nature to strengthen climate adaptation in Europe - the fastest-warming continent on Earth.
By investing in enhancing the health of ecosystems, the projects will also help to reverse nature loss in the continent. The recent WWF Living Planet Report found that species populations have declined by 35 percent on average in Europe and Central Asia since 1970.
Under the agreement, WWF will establish an ‘Incubation facility' to develop a pipeline of Nature-based Solutions from origination until they are investment-ready, while the EIB will provide guidance on mobilising public and private funding for them.
“Europe's adaptation to climate change lags far behind what is needed,” said EIB Vice-President, Ambroise Fayolle. ”We want to support more nature-based-solution projects to restore and protect biodiversity and strengthen the climate resilience of our society. Partnerships with organisations like WWF with a strong presence on the ground are a relevant way for us to help deliver tangible results on a large scale.”
Nature-based solutions face significant obstacles, including a lack of awareness among investors and a need for consensus building among a wide range of local players.
"Nowhere is immune from the climate crisis. Europe has been hit by a series of historic floods and droughts in recent years, devastating lives and livelihoods - and they are only going to get worse unless we urgently and drastically scale up investment in Nature-based Solutions,” said WWF Director General Kirsten Schuijt. “This partnership will do exactly that by creating a pipeline of projects that work with nature rather than against it. These projects will enhance the power of nature to protect Europeans from the worsening impacts of climate change, particularly droughts and extreme floods along the continent's rivers and coasts.”
The announcement of this partnership is timely as the new European Commission has announced that it will work on a European Climate Adaptation Plan, which will support building preparedness and planning with regular science-based risk assessments and a European Water Resilience Strategy.
It also comes after the EU Nature Restoration Law was adopted in August 2024. This regulation combines an overarching restoration objective for the long-term recovery of nature in the EU with binding restoration targets for specific habitats and species.
Over the years, the EIB has worked with WWF on a range of matters including Nature-based Solutions, biodiversity, climate resilience and ecosystem restoration. Cooperation has focused on the Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles, of which the EIB is one of the founding partners alongside WWF. Another example is EIB cooperation with WWF-Greece on stakeholder engagement to identify and develop nature-based solutions for flood resilience in Thessaly, Greece.
EIB at COP16
The EIB delegation will be led by Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle. For interview requests with members of the EIB delegation, please get in touch with the press contact below. Find out more about EIB at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference here.