Climate change is having increasingly adverse impacts on people and nature. It exacerbates existing
environmental threats, poses new risks and impedes our ability to achieve global conservation and
development objectives such as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the proposed Sustainable Development Goals. Across the globe, initiatives have been established to help communities implement approaches that enable them to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects. Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) is one such approach.
EbA uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a larger adaptation strategy – an excellent example of a viable nature-based solution. As well as providing climate change adaptation benefits, this approach also contributes to biodiversity conservation and enhances local economies. IUCN has been extensively involved in EbA work, strengthening community resilience and livelihoods in almost 60 countries.
This work demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the implementation of nature based solutions. Changes in global climate are increasingly having adverse impacts on human populations and natural systems. This has resulted in increased efforts to come up with options that can mitigate the impacts, as well as help to adapt to already occurring changes.
Ecosystem based adaptation is used by a number of organisations and in many developed and
developing countries as a means for climate adaptation, especially at the community level. It is also
applied for disaster risk reduction. Still, there is a propensity of policy makers to implement
traditional engineering solutions for adaptation rather than investing in EbA.
There is, therefore, a need to raise further awareness on the use of nature based solutions.
An important approach to promote investment in EbA is to identify its economic costs and benefits. This study therefore reviewed a number of projects in Costa Rica, India, Mexico, Peru, Philippines and Tanzania, to assess existing data and knowledge gaps regarding the economic values of EbA projects.