As 2025 draws to a close, and after yet another turbulent year for climate and nature, it can feel tempting to focus only on what’s going wrong. At Xilva, we’d like to do the opposite.
This is an invitation to pause, zoom out, and celebrate what did go right for nature-based solutions (NbS), forests, and community-led climate action this year. While doom-and-gloom headlines often dominate, real progress is happening quietly but steadily across landscapes, markets, and institutions worldwide.
Across forests, oceans, wetlands, rangelands, and Indigenous territories, nature is increasingly being treated as core infrastructure for climate stability, economic resilience, and social wellbeing. What makes this moment especially exciting isn’t any single project, but the convergence of policy reform, finance, technology, and community leadership. Together, these shifts point toward a near future where investing in nature restoration, conservation, and high-integrity carbon projects is no longer niche; it’s mainstream.
For companies, investors, family offices, and project developers navigating this fast-evolving space, these milestones also highlight a growing need for credible data, robust due diligence, and confidence in nature-based investments.
To finish the year on a high note, here are twelve standout milestones for nature-based solutions in 2025, and a reminder of what we’re all working toward.
1. Launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF)
At COP30 in Belém, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) was officially launched, marking a major breakthrough in global forest finance. Unlike traditional carbon offset mechanisms, the TFFF provides direct payments to tropical nations based on the total area of forest preserved, recognizing forests as a global public good. By aligning incentives with long-term protection, the TFFF offers a more stable and predictable model for safeguarding the world’s remaining tropical forests.
2. EU Integrates Nature-Based Credits into Its 2040 Climate Target
In late 2025, the European Union confirmed that high-integrity nature-based credits can contribute up to 5% of its 2040 emissions-reduction goal. This sent one of the strongest demand signals yet for high-quality restoration and conservation projects. Crucially, the EU’s emphasis on integrity helps distinguish credible NbS and forest carbon projects from low-quality offsets, raising the bar for the entire market.
3. Horizon Europe Launches the NBS4Drought Project
Kicking off in Denmark, the Horizon Europe project NBS4Drought brings together 25 partners in a four-year research consortium focused on NbS for drought mitigation. With a strong emphasis on wetlands, the project aims to deliver scientific, technical, and policy advances, alongside innovative financing models and practitioner training—helping translate research into real-world impact.
4. UN World Restoration Flagships Announced
In October 2025, the United Nations named four new World Restoration Flagships, recognizing large-scale, high-impact restoration efforts globally. Among them, The Restoration Initiative (TRI) stands out for bringing 310,000 hectares across Africa and Asia under restoration, benefiting more than 420,000 people. It’s a powerful reminder that ecosystem restoration can deliver climate, biodiversity, and livelihood benefits simultaneously.
5. South Pakistan’s “Green Sea Walls” Take Root
In the Indus Delta, community-led mangrove restoration - often called “green sea walls” - reached a major milestone. Restored mangrove forests stabilized thousands of hectares of shoreline, reduced coastal erosion, and improved local fish catches. These results reinforce mangroves as natural infrastructure that protects coastlines while supporting food security and local economies.
6. Equator Prize 2025 Celebrates Indigenous Leadership
The Equator Prize 2025, awarded by UNDP, recognized 10 Indigenous-led initiatives from Brazil to Kenya under the theme “Nature for a Just Transition.” These projects show how ancestral ecological knowledge, paired with tools like drones and digital mapping, can deliver effective and scalable ecosystem management—underscoring the central role of Indigenous stewardship in successful NbS.
7. Wilder Parks Advance Rewilding Across Europe
In 2025, Rewilding Europe’s Wilder Parks initiative selected 10 protected areas as frontrunners for embedding rewilding principles into formal conservation management. Through 2030, these sites will serve as living laboratories for how rewilding can strengthen biodiversity, ecosystem function, and long-term resilience within existing protected area frameworks.
8. Agreement to Develop a Global Nature Measurement Protocol
As biodiversity loss becomes increasingly material to economies and financial systems, leading global organizations agreed to develop a Nature Measurement Protocol in 2025. Convened by the Nature Positive Initiative and WBCSD, the effort brings together GRI, IUCN, TNFD, WRI, and the Capitals Coalition. The goal: standardized, decision-useful methodologies that link site-level data with national goals and financial reporting—bridging nature, carbon, and capital.
9. Tanzanian Community Innovation Goes Global
Pastoralist communities in Tanzania gained global recognition for the Sustainable Rangelands Initiative, which blends local knowledge with digital technologies to restore degraded land. Winner of the NatureTech Stewards category at the inaugural IUCN Tech4Nature Awards, the initiative shows how NbS can be both locally governed and data-driven—using mobile tools to monitor vegetation, water, soil health, and invasive species.
10. Bolivia Establishes Its First Indigenous Protected Area
In August 2025, Bolivia officially declared Loma Santa as its first Indigenous protected area, safeguarding nearly 200,000 hectares of Amazon forest within the T’simane Forest. The designation strengthens biodiversity protection while reinforcing Indigenous land rights and cultural continuity—a powerful model for inclusive conservation.
11. Patagonia Sees Expanded Protection Through Collaboration
In Patagonia, strengthened collaboration between governments and NGOs led to expanded protection of a critical biodiversity hotspot. This state–NGO partnership highlights how coordinated governance can accelerate conservation outcomes at landscape scale, moving beyond siloed approaches toward shared stewardship.
12. Major Philanthropic Investment Boosts Marine Conservation
In December 2025, the Bezos Earth Fund announced $24.5 million in new grants to support marine and coastal conservation across Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. The funding supports plans for the world’s first cross-border marine biosphere reserve and reflects a broader philanthropic push to mobilize billions toward protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030.
Ending the Year with Momentum—and Looking Ahead
Taken together, these milestones tell a hopeful story: nature-based solutions are maturing, capital is flowing more thoughtfully, and expectations around integrity, measurement, and impact are rising.
As NbS, forest conservation, and carbon credit projects scale, so does the need for rigorous due diligence, transparent data, and independent verification, to ensure investments truly deliver for climate, nature, and communities.
That’s exactly where Xilva comes in. We support companies, investors, family offices and insurance providers with nature and climate due diligence, helping them navigate complexity, manage risk, and invest in projects that stand up to scrutiny.
Here’s to ending 2025 with optimism, and stepping into the new year with confidence, clarity, and positive momentum for nature.