I fail to understand this logic. Billions are spent to discuss crisis—biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, disasters. Yet, for the solutions that would prevent these crises, investments are small. Less amount of money is spent to sustain solutions.
Probably people relate more to crises than resilience. Indeed, loss and damage, melting glaciers, heavy drought, flash floods, landslides, air pollution, water scarcity, hunger, poverty, displacements, livelihoods loss, habitat loss, biodiversity loss, land degradation, soil erosion and human-wildlife conflict sound more dramatic. We make them big headlines and so able to catch investors’ attention. Even a small crisis then becomes a matter of big investment.
In this piece, I wish to tell the other side of the story — the lesser known, less dramatic, less heard, and less invested. The story of solutions. Let me name a few here: flood plain restoration, spring revival, wetland revival, forest restoration, rangeland restoration, river corridors restoration, agroforestry, homegardens, regenerative farming, terrace farming, ecotourism or say most of the community-led ground actions that are often tried and tested in a small space, awaiting replication at scale, awaiting headlines, awaiting investors’ attention.
In the era of Anthropocene — where human impact on the environment is the greatest, the real gap is not the lack of solutions, but of investments that are big enough, and long-term enough to sustain and scale good solutions. Closing this gap requires investors to rethink how resilience is financed and how investments are shifted towards solutions that prevent crisis — especially Nature-based solutions (NbS) that restore landscapes and biodiversity, while reducing climate risks, and delivering measurable socio-economic returns — through environmental services that multiply over time.
Climate, biodiversity, food, water, disaster and livelihoods crises are not future risk. They are present liabilities. Proven solutions exists but they need scale to match the frequency and scale of crises. Scaling NbS needs investment innovation.
First, no single investor can do this alone. It will require different types of capitals working together — philanthropy, impact investors, corporates, development finance, and public finances, community leadership — all must combine and complement.
Second, it requires a well-designed evidence-practice-policy interface to de-risk investments. Government needs to create enabling policies for corporate investments to come in but with robust environmental and social safeguarding rules and regulations. Academia must invest in long-term research that monitors and quantifies changes, risks and benefits. Communities and local agencies must lead and operationalise the solutions with governments supporting them with adequate and equitable extensions and schemes. Philanthropic foundations need to come forward to fund solution innovations and pilots. Impact investors and development finances need to support government convert pilots into large scale programmes, where private investors can join hands to deliver higher return on investments.
Across the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), there is ample evidence of what works when nature, communities, and policy align. In Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of India, community-led springshed management has restored dried-up mountain springs by protecting recharge zones and rebuilding groundwater systems. These are low-cost adaptation solutions that reduce long-term water insecurity for thousands of households, reduce women’s time poverty, stabilise slopes, and strengthen food systems.
In Bhutan’s high-altitude rangelands, pastoralists and government agencies have jointly restored degraded pastures through prescribed burning—a traditional practice now supported by scientific risk management and formal policy. Once-degraded grasslands are recovering, livestock health is improving, and biodiversity is returning. Importantly, these practices are being supported by national operating procedures, turning local success into scalable, investable models of ecosystem restoration.
Further south, in the forest-farmland mosaics of the eastern Himalaya shared by Nepal and India, human-elephant conflict has long imposed severe social and economic costs. Local government, together with communities and development partners have restored functional wildlife corridors, created safe spaces, and early warnings for communities-enhancing co-existence.
Northeast India is a treasure trove of community-led sustainable land management — be it community conserved areas in Nagland, Integrated Apatani Landscapes in the Ziro Valley, regenerative agriculture and slow food innovation in Meghalaya, and wetlands management in Manipur and Assam.
In China, ample examples are available: sponge city, forest park, community-led bird watching tourism, the grain-for-green ecological compensation programme that have triggered large scale restoration while strongly supporting people’s development aspirations. Pakistan offers a well-known community-led compensation measures for wildlife protection and revenue generation through its trophy hunting innovation.
These are important solutions that reduce risk, help nature recover, provide diverse environmental services, generate opportunities for people to earn and support their livelihoods. Importantly, they provide ownership and space for credible partnership.
Despite evidence of several solutions, investments for NbS in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya remain severely low and fragmented. The problem is investment decisions for solutions depend on a narrow set of environmental indicators (for example hectares of land restored or extent of tree planted), and indicators around social, governance, and partnerships — that are key enablers — are often missing. NbS design allows that integration.
The countries in the HKH are gradually shifting gears. India’s Himalayan states are developing national roadmaps for springshed management. Bhutan is taking up Natural Capital Accounting for protected areas to integrate their environmental services into economic decision-making. Nepal is taking a lead in forest accounting, already refining how community-led positive forest change can be linked to global climate financing. Pakistan is assessing the socio-economic returns of large-scale ecosystem restoration. China’s ecological redlining demonstrates how firm ecological thresholds can guide long-term development planning.
Solutions, when founded on NbS design that is holistic (linked to long-term resilience), integrated (not just in disciplines and themes, but also in partnerships and sectoral engagement), inclusive (engaging women, youth, marginalised, disabled, indigenous communities), efficient (convergence of efforts), and cost-effective (multiple benefits and returns multiplying over time) — can reduce the frequency and scale of challenges, enhancing resilience and lowering post-crisis costs.
The opportunity in the HKH is clear. This mountain landscape at the centre of the climate crisis has more solutions that can make it greener and more resilient. Government, communities, and other institutions seem ready. The only worry is we might be too late to move our investments from crises to solutions.
Bandana Shakya coordinates ICIMOD’s work on Restoring and Regenerating Landscapes
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth