Climate is central to Australia’s International Development Policy, and it is a key commitment that our development program responds to the calls of our region and evidence of the accelerating climate crisis by increasing our climate investments and better addressing climate risks.
In September 2023, DFAT commissioned an evaluation of its nature-based solutions (NbS) investments to assess the effectiveness of NbS approaches to deliver against Australia’s climate, nature and development commitments. Three investments were selected to inform the evaluation: Climate Resilient by Nature, a partnership with WWF-Australia to build sustainable livelihoods in the Indo-Pacific; Pacific Blue Carbon Program, a partnership with Conservation International to build capacity to protect and restore blue carbon ecosystems in Fiji and PNG; and ReefCloud, a partnership with the Australian Institute of Marine Science using artificial intelligence systems to collect and analyse data on reefs.
The evaluation identified lessons from the three investments to propose a set of key principles and eighteen recommendations to guide DFAT’s NbS programming going forward. These recommendations have been responded to in DFAT’s management response.
Documents
Final Report
- Nature-Based Solutions Evaluation - Evaluation Report [DOCX 21.7 MB]
- Nature-Based Solutions Evaluation - Evaluation Report [PDF 2.7 MB]