Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
Human and natural communities are already at great risks from natural hazards through storm surge, floods and droughts and these are growing with climate change. Climate impacts are no longer next century’s problem. Natural solutions can help us adapt to these present and growing impacts.
DEFINITION
Ecosystem-based Adaptation is not synonymous with the broader term of adaptation.
“Ecosystem-based adaptation is the use of Biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Ecosystem-based adaptation uses the range of opportunities for the sustainable management, conservation, and restoration of ecosystems to provide services that enable people to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It aims to maintain and increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of ecosystems and people in the face of the adverse effects of climate change. Ecosystem-based adaptation is most appropriately integrated into broader adaptation and development strategies.”
-- As defined by the Second Ad-hoc Technical Expert Group on Biodiversity and Climate Change in 2009. AHTEG is a group established by the Secretariat’s office on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to provide biodiversity-related information to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
MATERIALS FROM THE NATURE CONSERVANCY
Link to document: TNC Adaptation Position Paper, Oct 2009
Link to document: Ecosystem-Based Approaches for People and Nature, June 2009
Link to document: Solutions for Healthy Coastal Ecosystems and Communities, 2009
Freshwater EBA Approaches: EBA Approaches- Freshwater
Ecosystem-based Adaptation Can Be Cost Effective
Waterfunds: Protecting Communities & Ecosystems in a Changing Climate
Reconnecting Floodplains: Protecting Communities & Ecosystems in a Changing Climate
Presentation on EBA by Trevor Sandwidth, at Los Angeles Health and Climate Symposium, on April 30th
MATERIALS FROM OTHER SOURCES
Ecosystem-based Adaptation: A natural response to climate change. 2009. IUCN.
Ecosystem-based Adaptation in Marine and Coastal Ecosystems, Lynne Zeitlin Hale, et al.; Renewable Resources Journal, Vol. 25-2009, No. 4. pp. 21-28.
- We are unable to provide free access to this article.
Natureandpoverty.net is supporting the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in collecting practices on Ecosystem Based Adaptation.
Climate change and cities from the European Environmental Agency:
The complete glossary of climate change and adaptation terms from the Working Group II Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) can be downloaded from the IPCC web site:
Convenient solutions to an inconvenient truth: ecosystem-based approaches to climate change, The World Bank.
COPENHAGEN, HIGH-LEVEL EVENT ON ADAPTATION
The Nature Conservancy sponsored a high-level event on adaptation at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, December, 2009. Organized with partners, this event catalyzed commitments from a dozen or so governments, agencies and companies to undertake real work on the ground to demonstrate how to build the resilience of communities by protecting the natural systems they depend on.
For more information: http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/features/art30351.html
