1. Re-think programming through the lens of ecosystem services

One of the many benefits of looking through an ecosystems lens is that it allows us to understand and address the ecological root causes of social and environmental issues that otherwise appear intractable, such as interclan conflict and drought itself. Interventions and legal frameworks that are based on this understanding – for instance, how rangeland degradation drives food insecurity and conflict and perpetuates drought – can reverse the downward spiral and simultaneously achieve humanitarian impact, longer-term adaptation and even mitigation, and of course healthier ecosystems.   

While this lens may be most powerfully applied when designing projects, we should not wait for new programming opportunities to adopt it. We can apply it to our existing programs to tweak approaches and, when necessary, request proactive adjustments from our funders or implementing partners. 

• Is the program I am implementing/funding based on a robust root cause analysis that has included an assessment of ecosystem characteristics or am I still working at the symptom level? 
• Have I articulated a clear and immediate food security outcome to my development/restoration program in FCAS or do I risk losing buy-in? 
• Is the program or policy replacing, complementing, or undermining nature’s provisioning services?
• Is it encouraging people to adopt maladaptive practices or incentivizing them to engage in a mutually-beneficial relationship with their environments?

While there has been significant progress in integrating environmental impact assessment tools and standards into the way we work, you can see that these questions move projects beyond ‘doing no harm’ to the environment, towards true partnership with nature.  

2. Adapt existing interventions and explore new models

Rather than upending existing programming, integrating an ecosystem lens and climate-adaptive solutions into existing approaches can help communities transition from reliance on fragile human-provided services to sustainable, ecosystem-driven ones.

In many cases, small changes to short-term interventions can unlock long-term impact. For example, enhancing borehole interventions with nature-based groundwater recharge plans and – where land is available – restoration sites increases their functionality and reliability over time, protecting lives both now and when the next crisis hits.  

In other cases, more significant adjustments to existing programming can more effectively and sustainably achieve the same goals – and more. For instance, rather than implementing traditional flood mitigation strategies such as sandbagging, implementers can collaborate with communities to bioengineer embankments by erecting earthen barriers reinforced by trees and other indigenous vegetation along rivers and flood plains. An improved understanding of pluvial flood risk would also allow programs to identify the best locations for upslope contour earthworks where rainwater and erosion can be caught before it joins the river and improving production opportunity.  

At the same time, new and innovative program models may reveal hidden potential and opportunities. For instance, piloting projects where ecosystem restoration is used as the primary tool for delivering humanitarian outcomes – such as reducing flood risk, recharging water sources, or preventing displacement – could serve as a proof-of-concept and demonstrate that nature-based interventions can meet both immediate and systemic needs.

Partnering with nature must be connected to livelihoods, food systems, and local governance – not siloed as a standalone thematic area under the title “climate.” Indeed, this work demands highly skilled, multi-disciplinary teams with engineers, agroecologists, and natural resource managers – not just generalist project officers. 

3. Work with – and at the speed of – nature and communities

Restoration work is most effective when planned at the scale of a natural ecosystem, which may be much smaller than you think. Working with nature through ecologically coherent, area-based programming designed around the landscape’s contours and ecosystem services can amplify the impact of our efforts. For example, it is most efficient if rangeland plans are implemented across grazing corridors and watershed management projects integrate both upstream and downstream users. While this may sound intuitive, the reality is that most projects implement based on arbitrary administrative boundaries such as district lines, rural vs. urban areas, and other criteria that typically divide ecosystems.

Remember those strange looking boundaries on the maps in Chapter Two? Those are nature-based areas that we delineated through a combination of remote sensing indicators (like watershed extents) and community discussions on ecosystem services. We’d be happy to share more information about our methodology – it might work for you too! Just reach out. 

Working with nature also means that programme approaches must centre natural and local timelines such as seasonal rainfall and traditional land-use cycles. Again, while this may sound obvious, in practice, budget cycles, disbursement delays, and logistical issues can often disrupt these links, leading seasonally-dependent programme activities to be implemented at the wrong time of year. At the same time, implementers and donors must be flexible, such that if key dates are missed, activities can be appropriately adapted to suit local and seasonal calendars.

Sustainable ecosystem governance starts by working with the systems and traditions that communities already trust like xeer and local coalitions of natural resource custodians who have managed their environments for centuries. When seeking to strengthen and build upon these practices, we must first invest in relationships and build trust by co-creating solutions and listening to local knowledge. While, indeed, this takes time upfront such community engagement is the activity not a box to be ticked before the activity begins. Community-first planning will always lead to faster uptake of improved practices, lower costs of delivery, and much better chances of post-project sustainability.  

4. Centre behaviour change for yourself and the communities you support

Partnering with nature is not a set of activities. It is a change of mindset. 

One of the mindset shifts that we are working towards—among communities, ourselves, partners, and donors—is that partnering with nature is not a set of activities but an entirely new way of doing business. This means treating community members as peers and investors in the process and using behaviour change models like the ‘think, feel, know, do’ framework to drive genuine participation. That might mean inviting co-financing from diaspora networks—or simply recognising time, labour, and governance as meaningful contributions where financial resources are limited. 

In practice, this also means moving beyond short-term cash-for-work models that risk dependency, and instead designing projects where community roles deepen over time—such as in managing sites or running seed banks—in exchange for shared benefits from restored systems. When introducing new concepts like contour earthworks, temporary incentives may still be needed, especially given the heavy physical labour involved. But to avoid reinforcing humanitarian dependence, it’s essential to be transparent about what future support is—and isn’t—available for replication. In our experience, once early results emerge—whether from permagardens or bioengineered riverbanks—communities are already planning where to take them next. 

We must also integrate indicators assessing cognitive, emotional, and behaviour shifts into our assessment of project success. Likewise, we must ensure that—like the programme itself—monitoring and evaluation efforts accommodate the time required for meaningful mindset and behaviour change to occur. Rather than focusing on counting activities implemented or knowledge imparted via training, monitoring systems should track progress along these pathways as well as aspects of the changing context that may affect how individuals and communities make decisions. 

5. Integrate ecosystem health data

Partnerships with nature must be driven by robust data on ecosystem health that goes beyond counting. This includes integrating community-led ecosystem diagnostics into needs assessments and targeting criteria; employing assisted citizen science tools like the ReGreening app to enable bottom-up monitoring, facilitate adaptive management, and generate locally-grounded data to track impact; and developing tools like BRCiS’ Ecosystem Health Dashboard that visualizes spatial data on ecological change.

We were serious in Chapter Two, when we said that we want you to use our data! The tools and evidence we’ve developed are open resources designed to support planning, prioritization, and monitoring efforts by any- and everyone ready to make this change. Please get in touch if you need help analysing or acting on this robust dataset.  

6. View partnering with nature as a viable exit strategy

Ultimately, given its ability to meet humanitarian, development, and climate objectives, partnering with nature is a viable humanitarian exit strategy. Nature-based solutions like those presented in Chapter Three reduce disaster frequency, severity, and impact; improve livelihoods; increase resilience; and enable communities to wean off of recurring aid.  

By reducing hazard exposure, enhancing adaptive capacity, and restoring degraded systems that underpin human wellbeing, strategic investments in ecosystem services—particularly those that incorporate partnerships with scientific actors like CIFOR-ICRAF—will save and improve lives in the short and long terms while simultaneously mitigating against climate change.

From our experience, communities are ready to partner with nature—they see the benefits and are eager to build on what works. What’s needed now is for donors and funders to help accelerate this shift and back programs aligned with these locally grounded approaches. This is not a traditional funding appeal, we are not asking for a blank check or offering yet another eye-popping HNO funding requirement. It is a call to action to think meaningfully about what can be done better through the resources that are available.  

If your resources are increasing, great—let’s scale.

If they are decreasing, great—let’s achieve disproportionate impact.

We believe that funders on each side of the HDP nexus have distinct levers to pull here is a bit of thinking about the biggest steps each side could take, but as there is more that unites us than divides us most of our recommendations should be applicable to all.  

As detailed above (and because no set of recommendations is complete without a laundry list), regardless of your sector, we think you can increase your chances of achieving disproportionate impact by investing in: 

• Nature-based solutions rather than quick-fix interventions.
• New and innovative program models to develop proofs-of-concept that can be scaled.
• Ecologically coherent, area-based programming that follows ecological boundaries.
• Interventions that are built around system-level management plans (rather than physical infrastructure or activity targets).
• HR structures that allow for sustained field presence and technical guidance.
• Building trust with local systems and communities.
• Robust biophysical data and decision tools and programmes that incorporate partnerships with scientific actors.
• Support “exit through restoration” as a funded, credible path for reducing long-term caseloads.

In line with funding integrated and area-based programming suggested above, donors can encourage implementers to develop shared visions across sectors (such as health, livelihoods, disaster risk reduction, and natural resource management), with ecosystem services as the unifying goal.

Funders can also promote ecosystem resilience by aligning funding criteria, indicators, and learning processes with globally recognized standards and context-specific tools. For example, they can adopt and promote standards like the Sphere Handbook’s Nature-Based Solutions guidance and the Somalia Resilience Working Group’s ecosystem principles to guide program design, implementation, and M&E. We suggest that funders allow for adaptive management and reporting on restoration targets while simultaneously keeping implementing partners accountable to what comes after the activity is done and the expenditure is reported. For example, how will they sustain and be accountable for outcomes in the weeks, months, and seasons after an initial activity?

Finally, funders are uniquely positioned to promote and actively finance multi-actor convergence around ecosystem services as a shared platform for joint planning across the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus. They can do this by creating incentives for collaboration across donor streams. For example, climate funders can finance early ecosystem work in humanitarian settings, while humanitarian donors pilot cash-plus models linked to ecological outcomes.

As part of this effort, funders can encourage adoption of universal indicators related to ecosystem services that strategically link humanitarian aid, sustainable development, climate change mitigation, and adaptation targets and goals and support countries to integrate often siloed reporting structures. Having globally agreed and consistent indicators and data can offer better insights into individual and community-level maladaptive and resilient behaviours, support more rapid mobilization of new interventions, facilitate scaling of proven interventions, and indicate gaps where more research is needed to refine existing efforts. 

Funders can likewise situate restoration within the broader governance conversation, as ecosystem services are closely aligned with stabilization and security needs, priorities, and efforts that are often at the fore of the governance agenda such as environmental peacebuilding and climate-driven conflict.