Agricultural producers can reduce climate change while gaining social and environmental benefits by implementing natural climate solutions including cover crops, avoiding grassland conversion, and better nutrient management. Scaling up natural climate solutions in agriculture is being investigated more and more as a key step toward achieving net-zero goals. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that adoption of natural climate solutions would not result in the desired advantages without a supportive governance ecology.

Smallholders in the developing world adapt their farming practises and use of agricultural inputs as they interact in new ways with agricultural markets. Heavy use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers causes soil degradation and genuine health risks for farmers in many areas, giving state authorities issues. It has been suggested that commercialization of agriculture and urbanisation cause metabolic rifts, or holes in the flow of nutrients that deplete soils and build up waste. Urban infrastructure systems are under strain from urbanisation, population increase, and climate change, among other issues. As a result, localised, nature-based solutions are replacing large-scale, centrally-located infrastructure. The planning and governance structures must be altered, and new interactions and configurations between various actors must be mediated through collaborative governance.