Ecosystem-based adaptation is an approach that uses biodiversity and ecosystem services to help communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. For example, protecting coastal habitats like mangroves provides natural flood defences; reforestation can hold back desertification and recharge groundwater supplies in times of drought; and water bodies like rivers and lakes provide natural drainage to reduce flooding. These nature-based approaches have a significant potential to boost increase humanity’s climate resilience while simultaneously protecting the natural world.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Adaptation Network conducted a stakeholder dialogue process to assess the most crucial barriers to ecosystem-based adaptation and how they can be overcome. This report aims to provide an overview of the main findings and conclusions of this process across three different regions: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
This report is an output of the Global EbA Fund, which is implemented jointly by UNEP and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The publication was made possible through the generous contribution of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) under the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV).
Furthermore, the report contributed to a comprehensive study on barriers to ecosystem-based adaptation, titled Harnessing Nature to Build Climate Resilience: Scaling Up the Use of Ecosystem-based Adaptation, which you can find here.
