Climate change poses a significant threat to sustainability. It disproportionately affects different social groups, intensifying interconnected risks across socio-ecological systems and challenging conventional approaches to disaster risk reduction and adaptation. These challenges are particularly pronounced in climate-sensitive ecosystems, such as arid and semi-arid regions, where land degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic vulnerability intersect.

Nature-based and community-led strategies offer effective, context-specific solutions that reduce climate risks, restore ecosystems, enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services, and support local livelihoods, enabling sustainable and equitable adaptation even in highly constrained environments such as drylands.

This session invites contributions that explore how nature-based and community-led approaches support disaster risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, and climate change adaptation across diverse ecological and socio-economic contexts, with a particular focus on research that:
- Assesses the effectiveness of these strategies in reducing risk and enhancing climate resilience
- Examines socio-ecological trade-offs and synergies by integrating ecological and social science perspectives within systems-based approaches
- Evaluates long-term resilience and restoration outcomes across varied ecological and socio-economic contexts, including arid and semi-arid landscapes
- Engages with Indigenous and local knowledge systems, emphasizing culturally grounded and community-driven solutions
- Investigates governance challenges, structural barriers, and enabling conditions, and explores inclusive frameworks that support equity, participation, and sustainability
- Investigates synergies and trade-offs between nature-based approaches and conventional measures
- Examines the effectiveness, resilience, and scalability of specific nature-based solution typologies (e.g., water harvesting, vegetation restoration, agroforestry)
- Examines innovative monitoring and assessment tools (e.g., citizen science, remote sensing, hydrological modelling, eDNA, AI) to evaluate, optimize, and scale nature-based and community-led strategies

This session is supported by the RISK-KAN Working Group on “Nature-Based and Community-Led Climate Risk Strategies.” Contributions from diverse regions are welcome, with a particular emphasis on early-career researchers and practitioners from underrepresented areas.