This document has been adapted from the research protocol used to compile country case study data and to produce the results summarized in the 2023 report Illuminating Hidden Harvests: The Contributions of Small-Scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development, coproduced by FAO, Duke University, and WorldFish.

Global sustainability challenges, such as climate change and the plastics crisis, converge across disciplines and involve diverse stakeholders. Given the magnitude and interconnected nature of sustainability challenges, problem-solvers must be trained across disciplines.

River restoration has primarily relied on public sources for funding projects, such as agency-based grants and philanthropy. More recently, there is growing interest in the potential role of private finance to offset the declines in public funding and to potentially increase the scale and scope of river restoration overall. This chapter, part of the book Resilience and Riverine Landscapes, reviews broad concepts in finance and then describes two broad types of private sector approaches to capitalizing restoration projects: voluntary markets and regulatory markets.

This comprehensive resource, created in collaboration with the US Department of the Interior, is a first-of-its-kind reference for implementing nature-based solutions. Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage or restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges—including climate change—in ways that help people and the environment. Examples cited in the Roadmap range from urban stormwater and runoff management to prescribed burns to living shorelines to restoration of various ecosystems.

Energy Pathways USA, an initiative of the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University, has released a report that offers new insights into US energy transition investments. This report comprehensively models the intersecting effects of the Inflation Reduction Act, clean electricity development cost increases, and the impacts of proposed US Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas regulations for fossil fuels.

The $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) in the Inflation Reduction Act—particularly the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund and $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator—represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage private capital for investments in environmental infrastructure and nature-based solutions, but the groundwork needs to be laid now. This document summarizes the relevant GGRF funds and their applicability for nature-based solutions.

There has been unprecedented recent government investment in nature-based solutions. This document lays out a vision that describes why nature-based solutions are relevant and important to green banks' and community development financial institutions' climate- and community-driven missions, and what types of projects these institutions might support.

The United States has increasingly relied on government-administered floodplain buyout programs to reduce flood risk and remove flood-damaged dwellings from floodplains. However, high transaction costs and long administrative timelines dramatically hamper buyout program efficiency. This report derives financial efficiency thresholds suggesting situational advantages to both private- and government-run buyout programs and also evaluates alternative institutional structures for implementing buyouts and novel mechanisms for financing buyouts

This year’s edition of the State of Blended Finance published by Convergence once again focuses on climate. Climate change continues to be central to the blended finance market and to sustainable development more broadly. Jackson Ewing, director of energy and climate policy at the Nicholas Institute, and Jonathan Phillips, director of the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke, were among the experts and stakeholders interviewed for the report. Ewing and Phillips offered insights on Just Energy Transition Partnerships as a partnership model for mobilizing climate blended finance.

The annual Carbon Pricing Leadership Report complements the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition’s advocacy and networking activities by elevating thought leadership in the mitigation arena and sharing how partners across all sectors are putting a price on carbon and engaging in carbon markets to reduce their emissions. Jackson Ewing, director of energy and climate policy at the Nicholas Institute, contributed to the report with an opinion piece titled "Stakes Increase as Voluntary Carbon Markets and Climate Finance Converge."