Nature-based solutions for improving food security: A systematic global review

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been promoted as a holistic way to solve a variety of societal issues while benefiting biodiversity at the same time. To date, applications of NBS approaches that help ensure food security have yet been systematically reviewed. In this paper, we critically review the specific NBS for food security, highlighting their limitations, to provide recommendations that promote their applications for improving global food security. We accessed and evaluated publications on four different scholastic databases, and our systematic review of relevant materials indicated that many NBS approaches can be applied to enhance food security dimensions individually or together. However, there is a strong bias towards food availability, and not enough research has been done to link NBS with improvements in food access and utilization. Over 80 % of the reviewed papers were of short-term studies or without specific time- frames, and 25 % offered no information on the economic effectiveness of NBS. Environmental benefits of NBS were explicitly described in about 60 % of these papers, and biodiversity enhancement was measured in only about 10 %. We, therefore, recommend future applications of NBS to safeguard food security be shifted to food access and utilization with careful consultation with local communities to address their specific context, using indicators that are easily measured and managed. Systematic monitoring regimes and robust and diversified financial support systems are also equally important in efforts to successfully implement NBS. Moreover, environmental and societal benefits, especially water productivity and biodiversity, must be incorporated into the planning and design of NBS.