Enabling climate action: A nexus approach for delivering co-benefits across biodiversity, water, food, and health

Highlights

• Fifteen climate options yield uneven biodiversity, water, food, and health outcomes

• Ecosystem-centered and demand-side pathways yield stronger nexus synergies

• Infrastructure outcomes depend on siting, tenure, and benefit-sharing

• Inclusive nexus governance and Earth System Justice sustain durable co-benefits

Summary

Climate response options rarely affect biodiversity, water, food, and health in uniform ways. This comparative analysis examines why technically viable response options generate uneven cross-nexus outcomes, and how governance and justice conditions shape whether these outcomes become durable co-benefits. Anchored in the IPBES Nexus Assessment, the analysis synthesizes evidence from fifteen response options spanning land, ocean, energy, urban, industrial, and societal transitions. Ecosystem-centered and demand-side pathways more consistently produce synergies because they work through ecological functions that connect several nexus elements. Infrastructure- and technology-centered options deliver mitigation and health gains, but their wider effects are more context-dependent and often shaped by land use, water demand, biodiversity risk, tenure, access, and benefit-sharing. These patterns do not arise from technical design alone. By integrating nexus governance with Earth System Justice, the analysis indicates how cross-sectoral coordination, distributive equity, procedural inclusion, accountable finance, and knowledge pluralism can shape legitimacy and durability. Climate action is more likely to deliver sustained system-wide benefits when institutions align ecological interdependencies with social rights and responsibilities. Otherwise, promising interventions may remain partial, contested or short-lived.

Citation

Singh, P. K., Gupta, H., Díaz-José, J., McElwee, P. D., Tirado, M. C., Cherubini, F., ... & Smith, P. (2026). Enabling climate action: A nexus approach for delivering co-benefits across biodiversity, water, food, and health. iScience, 29(11).