Share your examples of how you have used nature in infrastructure projects across Latin America and the Caribbean – or tell us why you haven’t – and your case study could be profiled by UN Environment and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Through a collaborative project, UN Environment, the Inter-American Development Bank, Acclimatise, and UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) aim to understand the barriers and enablers to private sector use of nature for building infrastructure resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Harnessing nature and the services it provides (also known as Nature-based Solutions) presents an opportunity to develop economically viable and cost-effective approaches that are complementary or alternatives to traditional ways of enhancing infrastructure resilience. It can also result in a wide range of social and environmental co-benefits, including improving local livelihoods and conserving biodiversity. Despite these advantages, few examples of the private sector using Nature-based Solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean have been profiled.

Do you use nature to protect, enhance or replace traditional infrastructure? If yes, we want to hear from you! If not, we’d love to understand why.

Any infrastructure projects in Latin America and the Caribbean that use nature could be of interest. Examples of relevant projects include:

 Telecommunications: Planting trees on the slope above a road to reduce the risk of damage from landslides to telecommunications assets, instead of (or in addition to) building a retaining wall.
 Water management: Using wetlands for flood management in place of dykes or levees.
 Wastewater treatment: Using wetlands for water treatment facilities in place of industrial water treatment facilities
     Ports: Restoring and managing mangroves to protect coastal infrastructures from storm surges, instead of building a seawall.
    Transportation: Using grass systems as replacement for concrete in stabilizing hillsides for road constructions.

 In particular, we are looking for examples that are:
 Led by the private sector, or have significant private sector involvement; and
 Designed to help build infrastructure resilience to climate change, or where climate resilience could be a secondary outcome.

Please take 15 minutes to complete our survey.

With your permission, selected case studies may be profiled by UN Environment and the Inter-American Development Bank

Any information you submit using this form will be shared between the collaborating organizations (UN Environment, the Inter-American Development Bank, Acclimatise and UNEP-WCMC) for the purpose of contacting you about this project, and may be used in project reports. This survey is a Google Form and the results will be collated in Google Spreadsheets. For more information please see: https://cloud.google.com/security/gdpr/. The information you provide will be password protected and will be retained for the duration of the project, until October 2020. If you are no longer happy for this information to be collected, stored and used in this way, please contact us at a.rycerz@acclimatise.us, and katie.dawkins@unep-wcmc.org 

Please contact us for more information, or if you have any questions.

Katie Dawkins, Programme Officer, UNEP-WCMC | katie.dawkins@unep-wcmc.org
Amanda Rycerz, Climate Risk Analyst, Acclimatise | a.rycerz@acclimatise.us