Nature-based solutions: literature review of the emerging field of sustainability in Brazilian academia

Nature-based solutions (NBSs) are a relevant topic that has been included in political, scientific, and academic discussions aiming to promote the 2030 Agenda. In the Brazilian context, the NBSs are relevant due to the rapid loss of biodiversity, the increasing environmental disasters, mainly floods and the multiple possibilities of promoting sustainability that the natural and social characteristics of Brazil allow. Thus, herein, a bibliographic study with qualitative and quantitative approaches was conducted, with the fundamental objective of understanding how Brazilian academia interprets and uses NBSs as possible tools to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The results show that Brazilian studies on the subject are very incipient and that NBSs are mostly employed with environmental approaches, with little consideration for the social and economic dimensions. It is concluded that it is possible to integrate the SDGs with the dimensions of NBSs and that Brazil, a country with vast biodiversity as well as serious social and economic problems, has great potential and a need to move toward the SDGs using NBS as a means to achieve them, and academia is essential to translate such knowledge into practice.