Ovink (UN): Disasters are an X-ray and an opportunity to learn

Stockholm (Sweden), Aug 31 (EFE).- Specialists in investments in nature-based solutions (SBN) – actions to improve ecosystems aimed at combating climate change and the water crisis – warn about the lack of “monitoring” as a barrier to “scaling” SBNs.

This has been expressed by several experts gathered at World Water Week 2022, the world water week that takes place in Stockholm (Sweden) until this Thursday and that once again has brought together the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs, to debate on the current challenges around water.

In an online and face-to-face session dedicated to SBNs as a way to mitigate global warming and increase water security in Latin America, the experts identified the lack of data and monitoring of the results of SBNs as a of the main barriers when it comes to attracting investment to promote these actions.

Financing is the main problem cited by FEMSA Foundation expert Ana Laura Elizondo, who lamented that, although SBNs have proven to be the most cost-effective for combating the water crisis, the investment gap is still “enormous.” , given the difficulty in proving results to investors, among other factors.

All the participants in the session agreed that the main obstacle was the lack of data to demonstrate to investors the positive impacts of SBNs at a financial level, although “we are going in the right direction,” according to the director of the FEMSA Foundation, Lorena Guillé -Laris.

“We need to move from traditional philanthropy and traditional dollars to SBNs,” Guillé-Laris summarized, stressing the importance of “coordination and leadership,” something the region lacks, he pointed out.

For Todd Gartner, an SBN expert at the World Resources Institute, the first of the challenges is that “many of the projects are at an early stage” and, thus, “it has not yet been ascertained where the revenue streams will come from to pay large-scale implementation.

“We have to focus on better understanding the science and the results of the work of the SBNs,” Gartner explained to EFE, adding that it is necessary to “understand how that return on investment will be” when deploying these actions, because “that will help us much to go from theory to application”.

“A lot of people will say that there is no capital willing to make investments in SBN, but if you look at all the climate and natural commitments that come out of COPs like the one in Glasgow, if you look at the commitments from the private sector, there are literally billions of dollars margin looking for SBN projects in which to invest”, he argued.

However, “the return expectations of these financiers right now don’t quite match what is possible to generate from these projects, so we have to bring the ecological and social expectations and the economic expectations of the financiers closer to what these initiatives can offer”, concluded the expert.

In this regard, the speakers highlighted the role of technology and, specifically, of satellite data to check, for example, the state of aquifers before and after investing in these solutions, as well as to increase transparency with a view to The interested parts.

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