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The case for Nature ID: How Digital Public Infrastructure can catalyze nature and climate action
The case for Nature ID: How Digital Public Infrastructure can catalyze nature and climate action
March 25, 2025
Climate change and biodiversity loss are interlinked global crises that demand new approaches to gathering data and using it to promote solutions at a whole-of-society scale. Yet today, the diverse data needed for environmental management are scattered widely, which makes it difficult to diagnose ecological health or implement conservation and climate action.
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has emerged as a viable means of addressing these challenges. Drawing on stakeholder consultations, country case studies and independent research, this study provides a roadmap for building a new type of DPI: a data exchange system that synthesizes and authenticates environmental, administrative and financial datasets. Such a DPI could amplify the visibility of complex ecosystems, and identify and recognize the value of environmental benefits in decision-making, thus is best described as ‘Nature ID’.
By enabling the sharing of this multi-dimensional data, Nature ID could give countries and local communities much greater access to environmental justice, green finance, transform agro-industrial value chain traceability and also help safeguard the rights of farmers and Indigenous Peoples, while contributing to our planet’s ecological health.
We invite you to read this paper to learn more about the exciting possibilities of Nature ID, and how UNDP could support countries in building a Nature ID of their own.
