Many participants at COP15 (and others around the world) feel convinced that the value of ecosystems – if calculated in the accounting for business and technology – could provide a new metric that would naturally regulate carbon emissions. Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) integrates the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services into an overall strategy to help people adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. This includes sustainability management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems that provide services that would help people adapt to both current climate variability, and climate change.
Scientific and economic evidence is revealing that it may be less costly to maintain ecosystems and to recognize their value to human activities, rather than try to simulate these important services that nature provides. Conserving and restoring nature so that it functions to provide important services to humankind and other life on Earth is a nature-based action that reduces the dollar commitments of developed countries in combating climate change. For example, it may be cheaper to maintain mangroves than to build a sea wall. It may be cheaper to conserve forests for carbon storage and biodiversity conservation than to cut them down and pay the restoration costs. Activities relating to water supplies, biodiversity, and ecosystem processes all require careful costing of what Mother Nature provides to human health. Case studies presented included the restoration of mountain ecosystems in Colombia, and conservation of mangroves in coastal communities of the Indian Ocean. For example, marine and coastal ecosystems provide livelihoods for 60% of people in Indonesia (plus 145 million who work with ecotourism), home for almost 150 million people, and 50% dietary protein.
“Vulnerable communities across the globe already suffer from climate change’s impacts on agriculture, water availability and quality, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and health. Ecosystem-based adaptation helps people cope with old and new challenges, and, what is more, enables local communities to make their own decisions and benefit from them,” says Ninni Ikkala, IUCN’s Climate Change Coordinator.
For UNFCCC, the importance of ecosystem-based adaptation is recognized at COP15, and will move forward to the decision-making table as part of a broader platform of ethical, economic, and ecological choices.
