Abstract:

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in combating climate change has become a big concern in international community. The ecosystems of NbS can be divided into forest, grassland, farmland, wetland, ocean and city. The traditional environmental policy instruments were applied to group the policy instruments of NbS in command-and-control regulations, incentive policies, and voluntary participation. Based on the division of policy instruments, the documents were collected and investigated to obtain a policy framework of NbS in China. At the moment, the policy framework is dominated by command-and-control regulations, and also is led by incentive policies with the promotion of voluntary participation. However, there are still a few problems including that NbS is not the mainstream way in addressing climate change, the management system from top to bottom is not sufficient, theory is still not complementary to practice, and other problems like single source of funding, weakness of technology and capacity-building, insufficiency in willingness to participate. To maximize NbS in China, NbS should be included in Nationally Determined Contributions and quantitative goals should be proposed at the next stage. Moreover, it is recommended to mainstream NbS in responding to climate change, to construct top-bottom management system, to establish diversified sources of funding, to strengthen the study on theory to practice and pathway to policy, to promote capacity-building and the willingness to participate.

Key words: Nature-based Solutions (NbS), Climate change, Policy instrument, Policy framework