Healthy ecosystems are essential for human well-being and development. People worldwide depend on their services, such as provision of fertile soil, clean water and food as well as extreme event buffering and climate regulation. Ecosystems are essential for protecting our climate and adapting to climate change.
Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) means using biodiversity and services provided by ecosystems to help people adapt to the effects of climate change. It builds on healthy ecosystems, and thus requires managing the ecosystems for their long-term benefits.
EbA is a holistic approach within land- and seascapes and applies to many sectors such as agriculture, forestry, tourism, city planning and water management. It involves a range of approaches for the sustainable management, conservation, and restoration of ecosystems, such as the protection of peatlands as natural water storages for buffering increasing amounts of sudden rainfall or the restoration of mangroves that act as natural barriers against storms and floods in coastal regions.
EbA measures play an increasingly important role in the context of climate change adaptation strategies. They complement or even substitute purely technological infrastructure approaches. They tend to offer economic, social and ecological co-benefits and opportunities for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions as well as biodiversity conservation, disaster risk reduction and prevention of desertification.
