The Nature Conservancy: Natural Climate Solutions Handbook

A Natural Climate Solutions analysis will help identify what land management actions have the greatest mitigation potential at any scale and in any landscape. The Nature Conservancy and partners have conducted a range of NCS analyses across the globe over the last 5 years. They developed this guide so that they could share the hard-won lessons learned by the scientists and conservation practitioners who have tackled these analyses. The report digs deep into the scientific literature, as well as our collective experiences, to gather as many best practices as possible for this guide in order to support a range of technical audiences and decision makers in scoping and conducting an NCS assessment.

In this guide, basic parameters are outlined for getting started with an NCS assessment, flag key decision points, and explain the factors to consider when making those decisions for your unique situation. This guide is structured to match the order of steps generally followed when conducting an NCS assessment—from identifying purpose and audience, to prioritizing and defining locally relevant pathways, to identifying the extent of opportunity and relevant GHG fluxes for each pathway, to estimating mitigation potential and costs – noting that many of the steps are iterative, requiring refinement after another step has been conducted.

Read the report.