Reflections on SDGP webinars: lessons learnt, best practices, and ways forward for biodiversity and climate

The SDGP Knowledge Exchange Webinar Series, hosted this year by IUCN NL, reNature, and VU Amsterdam, on behalf of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), brought together people from around the world to explore how partnerships can combine climate and biodiversity goals in projects, strategies, and businesses. The six webinars shared ideas from field projects, global frameworks, market systems, and monitoring approaches highlighting specific examples from SDGP projects. They show that sustainability challenges are linked across local action, policy, finance, and science.

Header photo: women working on a reforestation project in Uganda by ECOTRUST © Fanny Verkuijlen / IUCN NL

The Sustainable Development Goals Partnership (SDGP) Webinar Series demonstrated that achieving climate and biodiversity goals requires integrated approaches, inclusive governance, credible finance, and adaptive systems. Focusing on isolated short-term projects alone is not sufficient. Instead, we should take integrated steps to manage ecosystems, cut pollution, ensure proper water management, promote agro-ecological practices, and tackle climate change. Interventions should be inclusive of women and youth to ensure social equity and sustainable outcomes. By applying these lessons in future partnerships and business cases, projects can become examples of sustainable development, delivering ecological resilience, economic opportunity, and social justice together. In this article, we share a summary of key lessons learnt, best practices, and ways forward for SDGP projects.

Key lesson 1: moving beyond silos – climate and biodiversity as one

Climate and biodiversity cannot be treated separately. As demonstrated in the 2024 IPBES nexus report, food, water, climate, biodiversity, and health are deeply connected. The report indicates that ‘Societal, economic and policy decisions that prioritize short-term benefits and financial returns for a small number of people while ignoring negative impacts on biodiversity and other nexus elements such as climate and water lead to unequal human well-being outcomes.’

The following best practices can be drawn from the webinars:

• design farm systems with farmers so they own the solutions;
• build partnerships with government agencies and align projects with global frameworks, like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework; and
• employ nature-based solutions that deliver multiple benefits. For example, mangrove restoration protects coasts against erosion, creates habitat for fish populations, and mitigates climate change through carbon sequestration.

Emphasising the climate-biodiversity nexus

Various speakers emphasised the climate-biodiversity nexus. During the first webinar, AidEnvironment demonstrated the nexus through the Going Bananas project, where 2,000 farmers in the Philippines moved from single-crop farming to mixed agroforestry improving carbon storage, soil health, and biodiversity at the same time. Agriterra presented low-carbon coffee value chain in Kenya with six facilities producing 335,000 kg of compost each year and reNature demonstrated how conventional farming systems in both Indonesia and Ghana can be successfully transitioned into resilient agroforestry in a structured and scalable way starting small, validating impact, and then expanding. A few months later, the Kennemer Group (webinar four) shared landscape approaches that combine carbon and biodiversity credits through community management. Last but not least, IUCN NL stressed the importance of working with the Global Biodiversity Framework’s 23 targets and using the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-Based Solutions’ eight criteria in webinar two and six.

Key lesson 2: Inclusive governance is essential

Including all stakeholders, especially women and youth, should be embedded in project design from the outset, as this is key to achieving locally-led sustainable development. In particular, the third webinar showed how gender justice is key to effective climate and biodiversity projects.

Best practices include:

• identify the barriers women and youth face;
• create safe spaces for participation;
• make sure women control resources, not just use them; and
• include gender and youth in all parts of programmes, including budgets, monitoring, and evaluation ensures sustainability of results after projects have ended.

Examples of inclusive governance

In the third webinar, Partners for Innovation shared research from Niger showing women are more concerned about climate change and actively lead conservation and marketing work. Both Ends stressed in webinar six the importance of including women, youth, and pastoralists when designing the Communities Regreen the Sahel program. Also in the third webinar, IUCN NL elaborated on the Gender Action Learning System (GALS), a participatory method used in Uganda’s forest restoration project that reduces inequality, empowers women, and improves results for locally-led conservation oriented enterprises.

Key lesson 3: finance and markets need integrity and access

Carbon and biodiversity credits can provide a positive impact. However, assuring smallholder farmers can access them fairly and preventing only wealthy individuals benefit, requires strong standards and careful design.

Best practices identified during the webinar:

• build strong projects before entering carbon markets with benefit-sharing systems and community management;
• pair carbon credits with community benefit standards (CCB credits) for higher corporate interest;
• use landscape approaches that bring together reforestation, livelihoods, and biodiversity; and
• work with trusted certification systems and corporate ESG requirements.

Addressing market integrity and access challenges

In the fourth webinar, TREEVIVE highlighted the need for integrity in voluntary carbon markets and working with trusted certification schemes like VCS, Gold Standard, and Plan Vivo. Max Berkelmans, working with ACORN and Rabobank, addressed during the same event the barriers smallholders face: certification, measurement and monitoring, market access, and getting finance. He showed how partnerships with Plan Vivo Foundation and remote sensing technology may help solve these problems. Subsequently, the Kennemer Group noted companies will pay more for high-quality credits with clear community benefits.

Key lesson 4: monitoring for learning, not just accountability

Strong but flexible Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems are important. Traditional monitoring focuses on proving impact to donors, but success comes from learning cultures where projects adapt based on feedback and local knowledge.

Best practices include:

• combine local knowledge with scientific tools for impact assessment;
• track indicators on biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate at both farm and landscape levels;
• build a culture of reflection and adaptation rather than compliance-focused monitoring gives better data and more intrinsic motivation to adapt projects; and
• support community-led monitoring, to ensure learning continues after projects have ended.

Showcasing learning-oriented monitoring in practice

In the fifth webinar, multiple organisations discussed monitoring and evaluation frameworks and practices. RVO introduced learning-oriented monitoring, which focuses on learning rather than just accountability, and emphasises the importance of learning culture, safe spaces, time, and capacity. Next, AidEnvironment presented an agroforestry monitoring tool that combines farm-level and landscape-level indicators to show how individual farm improvements helped restore larger areas. In the Tsara Project in Madagascar, a land simulation platform is used that combines local and scientific knowledge through scenario modelling to help communities make informed policy decisions. Additionally, reNature and a collaborator of Wageningen University shared insights on Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) based on their work with Regenerative Rice Systems in Bali, Indonesia. reNature applies a farmer-inclusive M&E approach to assess regenerative practices in complex rice cultivation systems. This methodology not only measures environmental impact, but also integrates farmer knowledge, community feedback, and on-farm data to ensure that improvements are locally relevant, adoptable, and scalable.

Key lesson 5: scaling proven approaches cost-effectively

Proven methods like farmer-managed regeneration, bio-solution production, and participatory agroforestry must be scaled through supportive policy, finance, and knowledge-sharing, with attention to cost-effectiveness.

The following best practices were identified:

• use quality standards like the IUCN Global Standard for Nature Based Solutions;
• test solutions through demonstration plots before scaling: visible results in neighbouring farms drive natural adoption effectively; and
• build mixed financing models that combine grants, credits, and local enterprise to ensure projects continue after donor funding ends.

Highlighting proven scaling approaches

During the first webinar, AidEnvironment showed scaling through the set-up of the Carbon Organic Slope Farmer Association (COSFA), shifting farmers from being project beneficiaries to trained educators who disseminate which changed from project beneficiaries to teachers spreading regenerative agriculture practices to other communities. Woord en Daad showed scaling youth entrepreneurship in Chad with climate risk tools and agroecological solutions in webinar three. A few months later, in the closing webinar, Both Ends presented the Communities Regreen the Sahel programme’s remarkable result: restoring 140,000 hectares at less than 50 euros per hectare through farmer-managed natural regeneration.

Ways forward for SDGP projects

Based on the lessons learnt from the webinars, we have identified practical recommendations for future SDGP projects.

1. Integrate biodiversity. Treat biodiversity as essential in all future RVO  projects. The IPBES nexus report shows that food, water, climate, biodiversity, and health are all closely connected. Therefore including biodiversity and climate resilience from the start when designing projects, will bring multiple benefits.
2. Implement actions at both farm and landscape scales. Pilot projects at the farm level depend on healthy broader ecosystems, which landscape approaches support by integrating carbon, water, reforestation, livelihoods, biodiversity, and community involvement.
3. Empower inclusivity. Build gender and youth strategies into projects from the start to ensure they continue after projects have ended.
4. Secure finance. Build mixed funding models combining grants, credits, and local business. Public finance needs to create the conditions for fair and inclusive investments.
5. Strengthen MEL. Use adaptive, learning-focused monitoring with community involvement through group discussions, surveys, and accountability to target groups.
6. Leverage global frameworks. Work with the Global Biodiversity Framework and IUCN’s Nature Based Solutions Standard for legitimacy, guidance, and partnerships.
7. Foster policy engagement. Use evidence from projects to influence sub-national, national and international policy so successful approaches can be scaled up. Making sure that projects both deliver practical results on the ground, but include an element that translates this to a policy advice, else the relative investment for farm-based projects is too high.

About the SDGP Webinar Series 

This year’s SDGP Knowledge Exchange Webinar Series consisted of six webinars taking place between November 2024 and June 2025. These knowledge exchange events provide action-oriented perspectives on climate change, biodiversity and nature-based solutions, highlighting specific examples from SDGP projects. Bringing together people from around the globe, the series was organised by IUCN NL, reNature, and VU Amsterdam, on behalf of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).