Unlocking Nature for Disaster Resilience: How Policies Can Pave the Way and Scale Up Nature‑Based Solutions

Around the world, governments and communities are harnessing the power of nature to manage rising climate risks. Mangroves are restored to reduce storm surges, wetlands rehabilitated to absorb floodwaters, urban trees planted to cool neighborhoods, and upland forests protected to stabilize slopes and protect drinking water sources.

_{Figure 1: NBS Interventions for climate resilience}

Despite the growing recognition of NBS for their wide-ranging social, economic, and environmental benefits as well as for their transformative role in building climate-resilient economies, one critical aspect is often missing: The policies that make them happen.

To address this, the World Bank's GFDRR is launching its new publication, Unlocking Nature for Disaster Resilience: A Policy Guide to Enable Nature-Based Solutions, which offers a practical roadmap to support governments and World Bank teams shape national and local policies to unlock, scale, and sustain NBS.

Why Policies Matter

Global investment in NBS is rising. Between 2012 and 2024, the World Bank financed approximately 250 NBS investment projects for climate resilience, totaling $12 billion. These projects have rehabilitated 4.6 million hectares of ecosystems and benefited more than 28 million people.

Yet public and private investment needs to grow substantially if countries are to move beyond pilot projects and embed NBS as standard, sector-wide practice to strengthen resilience and meet international climate commitments.

The barriers? Outdated regulations, siloed sector policies, weak incentives, insufficient enforcement, and the simple reality that in many sectors, policies still favor gray infrastructure by default. Public policy is a key lever for scaling up NBS - together with other levers such as financing and institutional capacity. However, the policy reforms needed to shift practice are still largely missing.

This guide aims to shift the paradigm. It shows how well-designed policies can enable NBS, turning isolated projects into systemic change. Deliberate policy choices can:

• ALLOW NBS by removing regulatory barriers and establishing standards and official technical guidelines.
• INCENTIVIZE NBS by offering subsidies, tax credits, fast-track permitting, and dedicated public funds.
• REQUIRE NBS, for example, by mandating green buffers in urban development, including NBS in climate risk and environmental assessments, or setting rules for ecosystem offsets.

This flexible three-pronged approach enables countries to tailor reforms to their specific contexts, raising ambition for NBS upscaling while carefully balancing potential tradeoffs.

A New Policy Agenda

To provide a set of practical tools for policy reforms, the guide breaks down key policy instruments countries can use across all levels of government and across key sectors.

_{Figure 2. Overview of policy levels and instruments presented in the policy guide}

Every sector has the potential to integrate and scale NBS through policy reforms. The guide focuses on six policy areas most impactful for disaster and climate resilience: disaster risk reduction, climate change, environment and biodiversity, water, agriculture and forestry, and building, land use and urban planning. It also highlights opportunities in the transport, tourism, energy, and extractives sectors, which are priority development areas for the World Bank and where NBS are poised to play an expanding role. The following excerpts offer a snapshot of the insights and guidance explored in the publication.

Turning Policy into Resilience

Countries stand at a crossroads. They can continue to invest solely in traditional gray infrastructure or they can adopt policies that enable ecosystems shape resilient societies and economies.

This guide equips governments, World Bank teams, and other practitioners with what is needed to take the next step: practical policy instruments that promote nature at scale and strengthen resilience across sectors, cities, and countries.

To learn more, explore the full report here and discover how GFDRR is advancing nature-based solutions.