Climate change is no longer a distant warning. Melting glaciers, dying coral reefs and collapsing ecosystems are racing toward dangerous tipping points, posing significant risks to both people and nature.

Many countries, including China, are responding to the alarming signals. China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) focuses on developing river-basin economies, highlighting a powerful idea: nature is part of our infrastructure, and investing in it could strengthen resilience.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) could turn this idea into practice.

NbS involves actions that protect, restore and manage ecosystems so that they continue to provide essential services for people and businesses.

Forests regulate water and stabilize slopes, wetlands store floodwater and filter pollution and mangroves shield coasts from storms and erosion. Urban trees and parks cool streets and reduce heat stress.

In these ways, nature delivers essential ecosystem services — flood protection, water security, coastal defense and urban cooling — that make existing "grey" infrastructure more resilient.

By viewing nature as a form of infrastructure, we recognize that, unlike roads, dams or drainage systems, natural systems can renew themselves and deliver multiple benefits simultaneously.

Trees or mangroves, for example, could regulate water, store carbon, support livelihoods and enrich communities with cultural and recreational spaces.

Thus, nature is no longer external to socio-economic development, but a core asset that generates goods and services essential for sustaining other economic activities. Our long-term prosperity depends on protecting nature.

In a warming world with more frequent hazardous weather events, the capacity of ecosystems to absorb climate and disaster shocks is one of the most cost-effective ways to adapt.

Yet, investment in nature still falls short. Global estimates indicate an annual biodiversity finance gap of around $700 billion between now and 2030.

One major barrier is that many of nature's benefits — such as a stable climate, or cleaner air — are not properly valued and priced in project appraisals or national accounts.

Tools and outcome metrics to measure and quantify the socioeconomic gains from NbS are still developing, making these benefits easy to overlook.

Also, data on nature remain fragmented, standards on nature finance are still evolving, and many public NbS projects have to coordinate across multiple agencies and ministries.

All this can make nature-positive investments look risky, hard to structure and difficult to implement, even when they make strong economic sense.

As climate impacts intensify, building resilience is no longer a choice but a necessity. Investing in nature can change how we design infrastructure, plan cities and shape our economies for the long term.

A holistic approach is needed to align policy, project preparation and finance, so that NbS are systematically built into decisions rather than added on later.

First, efforts could focus on bringing nature into the mainstream of project finance. This entails developing and using simple methods to identify nature-related risks and opportunities early in project preparation, so that suitable NbS measures can be built into the design from the very start.

This work can build on the environmental and social safeguard reviews that many financial institutions carry out for the projects they finance, making such standards easier to apply and institutionalize.

In parallel, a practical "menu" of NbS options can be compiled for key investment areas, offering project teams a set of tried-and-tested measures for climate-resilient infrastructure that can then be tailored to local conditions.

Second, financial markets need to deepen and continuously innovate to better support investment in nature, including NbS. For NbS that are integral to climate-resilient infrastructure, more adaptation finance could be directed to these activities as part of core project funding.

Some NbS can also generate high quality carbon credits, drawing on existing accounting methodologies used in some global and national voluntary markets.

Moreover, new types of labeled sustainable finance instruments can be piloted to channel capital into nature-positive projects.

Emerging nature-finance taxonomies from international institutions, such as the one recently launched by multilateral development banks, could offer a useful starting point for defining qualifications and guiding the design of such instruments.

Furthermore, a portfolio approach could bundle NbS projects that would otherwise be too small or fragmented, helping to overcome bankability challenges and attract larger-scale investment.

Third, to support the endeavors mentioned above, cross-sector policy making needs to be strengthened so that clear, consistent guidance comes from the top. A country's climate strategies — especially adaptation plans — should be aligned with planning for biodiversity conservation and natural resource management, and coordinated across ministries.

This is crucial when setting strategic targets and designing financial and economic incentives, so that NbS are encouraged and enabled in a coherent way across different sectors and levels of government.

Last but not least, capacity building also needs sustained attention across all key stakeholders, including financial institutions, governments, contractors and regulators, so they know why and how to integrate NbS into major decisions in the first place.

This will be a gradual process, and expand as more data, practical tools and financial instruments become available, tested and ready to scale up.

Across emerging markets and developing countries, strong examples of NbS are already emerging, including in China, where rivers, grasslands and coasts are often being used to support development and resilience.

Picture a solar farm spread across once-degraded land, with panels raised just high enough for sheep or goats to graze in their shade: the panels help slow down wind erosion, the ground cover restores biodiversity and stores carbon, and local herders earn steadier incomes while clean power feeds nearby towns.

Such vivid combinations of clean energy, healthier ecosystems and stronger rural livelihoods show how emerging markets and developing countries can pioneer NbS at scale and play a leading role in advancing climate-resilient, nature-positive growth.

As the world looks toward the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference, the focus is shifting from high-level commitments to concrete implementation.

Now is the right moment to bring NbS out of the margins into the mainstream of climate and development plans.

Countries and other stakeholders can arrive at the upcoming conference with real projects underway — restoring rivers, forests, coasts and city landscapes that protect people and the planet.

Roman Novozhilov is the chief of the Environment, Social and Governance Department at the New Development Bank; and Yuan Zheng is a climate finance specialist of the Strategy, Policies and Partnerships Department at the New Development Bank.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of the New Development Bank and China Daily.

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