The initiative aims to promote sustainable and resilient infrastructure in emerging economies by applying cost-effective nature-based solutions (NbS). The focus is on strengthening infrastructure resilience against climate-related events through innovative green infrastructure interventions.

Project Background

• This project seeks to apply an NBS approach to improve and/or enhance the resilience of several sectors, starting with infrastructure assets in Africa and Central Asia. The NBS-IA seeks to support entities that work on sustainable infrastructure and NBS from a design, technical and/or technological innovation perspective, and which are in the development, testing and/or implementation stage of their product or service, with grants and other support (e.g. communication, knowledge management and connections with potential (co)funders/investors) to advance their solutions in green infrastructure and other key NBS sectors. The overall objective is to create a NBS Innovation Accelerator (NBS-IA) in emerging markets that proves that it is possible to apply financially-viable NBS solutions to a wide variety of sectors – starting with infrastructure. The NBS-IA aims to support entities working on concrete NBS solutions, both public and private, that also have the potential to attract subsequent capital from public and/or private investors (e.g., impact investors, multilateral funds, DFIs, MDBs) to implement and scale their solution(s) in practice.

Project Description 

• UNEP is seeking a project implementation partner to deliver activities from design to implementation. The selected partner will provide the following activities.
  • Call for Proposals/Project Design Phase (Jan 2026 – Aug 2026)
    • Project and consortium development - launch of call for proposals and/or pre-selection of consortiums
    • Screenings, assessment, scoring and due-diligence for selected proposals in target countries, including legal, technical, financial and risk assessment, narrative and baseline development.
    • Operationalisation (drafting, negotiating, and signing) all the contractual agreements with the consortium leads and the project implementing partners. Consortium leads can be either public (not-for-profit) or private (for-profit/not-for-profit) entities.
  • Project Implementation Phase (Sep 2026 – June 2029 )
    • Launch of pilot projects, activities kick-off.
    • Data collection and monitoring (Environment, social, and financial performance and impact data collection against baseline), financial and technical review of pilots, mid and end-scope updates
  • Policy Insights and Recommendations
    • Policy insights and Recommendations/Lessons learned reports

Deliverables 

• Due Diligence and selection report on NBS IA consortiums and website launch (Q2 2026)
• Mid-Scope update report on project implementation – financial and technical progress update on pilots (Q3 2027)
• End of pilots summary report – documentation of activities, achievements and status at project end (Q4 2028)
• Final NBS IA Report with project’s progress and implementation, policy Insights and lessons learned publication (Q1-2 2029)

Project Duration (for Cooperation Modality)

• The project implementation period is from Q3 2025 until Q2 2029.

Project Requirements

• Demonstrate expertise in nature-based infrastructure and environmental sustainability management for infrastructure
• Experience in running calls for proposals with a solid due diligence approach to identify cost-effective and impactful NbS infrastructure intervention
• Experience in project implementation and financial management for donor-funded programs
• Experience in NbS infrastructure on ports, energy, water management, and transportation sectors in Africa and Central Asia is preferable

Who can apply?

• Not-for-profit, non-governmental entities

For more information, visit UNEP.

https://www.unep.org/calls-for-proposals