On 16 June 2022, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and of the Nature Conservancy (TNC) formalized their partnership through the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed by QU Dongyu, Director General, FAO and Jennifer Morris, CEO, TNC.

FAO and TNC have a long-standing collaboration, having worked jointly on a number of projects and co-developed a series of policy and investment guidelines. 

The MoU aims to further advance knowledge and capacities to apply integrative sustainable production transitions that ensure mutual benefits in biodiversity protection, support climate change obligations and requirements, and address major drivers of unsustainability that hinder the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the implementation of FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022-2031.

FAO is currently developing a nature-based solutions (NBS) framework, along with tools and methodologies to apply them in a variety of contexts.  The partnership with TNC will strengthen not only these products but also advocate for such approaches in many different fora (such as in processes within the Rio Conventions and in international financing structures). TNC and FAO will work to define and apply solutions that address both the need of countries to align the biodiversity conservation objectives and ensure the transition to sustainable and resilient agrifood and production systems.

Through this MOU, TNC and FAO plan to explore how sustainable approaches like NBS can be supported in their application in Latin America and Africa, using data and information provided under the Hand-in-Hand Initiative. The benefits of such approaches is that they are viable in many different contexts. For example, NBS can be applied to rural and urban contexts as well as adapted to meet the specific requirements for small island developing states. The idea is to build transformative alliances that have the potential to end poverty and hunger through agrifood systems transformation. Ultimately, the partnership will contribute to global initiatives such as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and work such as the FAO Green Cities Initiative.

In addition, FAO and TNC plan to work together on the design and implementation of Global Environment Facility (GEF) projects, and will develop joint advocacy efforts.   

******

TNC is a US-based non-profit organization specialized in biodiversity conservation, with a specific focus on nature-based solutions for the protection of land, oceans and waters and on combatting climate change.

Related links:

The Nature Conservancy

https://www.nature.org/en-us/