At this summer’s Oxford University Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) Digital Dialogues , a conversation between top scientists in the field took a deeper dive into the opportunities and hazards of NbS to address climate change. This timely conversation highlighted how we as policy makers, corporate leaders, environmentalists and the general public gravitate towards simple solutions and prefer to adopt cures that require the least of us. The conversation also shone a light on the danger of assuming that climate change can be addressed with NbS and without decarbonization of the world’s economy. A video of the dialogue can be found here and the 90-minute investment of time is well worth it for those seeking a deeper knowledge of the issue, the possibilities and the challenges.
It is the monthly immunization day, and Salma Khatun is waiting for the boat to come take her across the Brahmaputra to Ramhari Char. She holds in one hand an ice box, filled with vaccines she will be administering later that day, and on the other, an umbrella, to protect herself from the fierce summer sun. Salma is a nurse at the only health center in Ramhari Char, an unelectrified island village, one of the many scattered throughout the vast Brahmaptura. In the absence of electricity and storage at the village, health workers like Salma travel to the mainland on the first Wednesday of every month to collect vaccines for immunizing children back at her health center.
