UMass Environmental Economist Marta Vicarelli Briefs White House on Nature-based Solutions Research

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Marta Vicarelli, assistant professor of economics and public policy, recently briefed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on new research she led demonstrating that nature-based solutions (NbS) are an economically effective method to mitigate risks from a range of natural disasters, which are only expected to intensify with climate change.

NbS are interventions where an ecosystem is either preserved, sustainably managed or restored to provide benefits to society and nature. For instance, they can mitigate risk from a natural disaster, or facilitate climate mitigation and adaptation. NbS have emerged in combination with or as an alternative to engineering-based solutions. A classic example is restoring wetlands to address coastal flooding rather than constructing a seawall.

Last year, the Biden-Harris administration announced new actions to advance NbS to better protect communities from the impacts of climate change. The federal government has also developed an NbS roadmap, which was unveiled at the 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference.

“Many humanitarian organizations are very interested in nature-based solutions, because recovery cannot happen if there is not a healthy environment,” Vicarelli recently explained to MassLive. “Also, nature-based solutions that mitigate hazards also mitigate the impacts to human health and human security.”

In their research, Vicarelli and her co-authors, four of whom are UMass alumni, found that the majority of funding for NbS has, so far, come from the public sector. They argue that for these interventions to scale up, innovative financing strategies involving private actors are required.

Catalyzing green financial innovations is the goal of the European Union-funded Naturance project, of which Vicarelli is a part. Project partners include numerous European research and innovation organizations including the London School of Economics, Cambridge University and the University of Venice, as well as insurance industry representatives, insurance brokers, sustainable finance experts, networks of regional and local governments, and non-governmental organizations. The initiative aims to connect existing major knowledge networks and foster cross-domain knowledge-sharing to explore innovative nature-based insurance and investment solutions.

Vicarelli notes that there is a significant global interest in NbS among policymakers and private-sector actors. In May 2023, as she and her co-authors were still writing their paper, they were invited to present their findings to a World Bank event focused on disaster risk reduction.

“There are reasons to be optimistic,” Vicarelli says. “For instance, the insurance and reinsurance sectors are emerging as partners of the public sector toward innovative, sustainable green insurance and investment solutions for NbS.”