Nature-Based Solutions Foundation Selected as Finalist for 2024 Land Awards!

May 24, 2024

We’re excited to share that the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation (NBSF) has been selected as a finalist for the 2024 Land Awards, which celebrates leadership in sustainable land use and real estate in British Columbia!

NBSF was nominated for our efforts to provide key support to Indigenous Protected & Conserved Area (IPCA) projects in BC, with a special focus on our collaboration with the Kanaka Bar Indian Band for their T'eqt'aqtn IPCA. This incredible 320-square kilometre IPCA will safeguard around 125-square kilometres of some of the rarest old-growth forests in BC; include a core section of BC’s least represented ecosystem, the Interior Douglas-Fir zone; and support Kanaka Bar’s millennia-long connection to their unceded lands.

Through our work with Kanaka Bar, we hope to demonstrate how conservation financing can help First Nations communities meaningfully protect endangered ecosystems while supporting their transitions to resilient conservation-based economies that are aligned with their cultures, values, and management authority. 

Photos taken in Kanaka territory of Kanaka members and NBSF team

Thanks to our collaboration with Kanaka Bar so far, we are now working with approximately half-a-dozen First Nation communities in BC to help them develop IPCAs across approximately half-a-million acres of land—an area larger than the cities of Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton combined.

These projects are a part of our greater BC-based program, the “Old-Growth Solutions Initiative”. Learn more about the program here.

We want to say a big thank you to our partners at TELUS for nominating us, and to the Real Estate Foundation of BC, presenter of the Land Awards. 

We look forward to meeting everyone at the 2024 Land Awards gala in Vancouver on June 13th!