The Stanford Natural Capital Alliance (NatCap) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have collaborated on several new, complementary resources available in Spanish and English – a free Massive Open Online Course (or MOOC) and an online Implementation Toolkit -- to support applications of natural capital approaches around the world. These approaches integrate nature's benefits to people into decisions, helping to address major development challenges, like water, food, and energy security, and sustainable livelihoods. The team is launching these resources during several events this week at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties (COP 17) in Yerevan, Armenia.
The new resources distill lessons from the People, Planet, Prosperity (3Ps) project, a collaboration between NatCap, IDB, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the World Bank, into practical materials other countries, finance institutions, companies, and consultants can adapt and apply. The 3Ps project included 16 pilot countries in which the work directly informed policy and investment decisions with evidence about return-on-investments in nature.
A new synthesis report is also available sharing outcomes from across the pilot projects, focused on the 10 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific region that NatCap worked on with IDB and ADB. This portfolio of projects is influencing $1.6 billion in financing, primarily through informing where funds can best support outcomes for people and nature.
***Across 10 countries, the pilots co-developed and used natural capital evidence to inform more than 12 national laws, plans, and financing instruments across ~10 sectors, from wetland zoning in Uruguay and biodiversity offsets in Chile, to watershed investments in Sri Lanka and natural capital accounting in the Philippines.
The free, self-paced 20-hour online course ( English | Spanish ) and the toolkit ( English | Spanish
