There is little doubt there is an imperative need to respond to the growing challenges posed by climate change. This involves increasing the resilience of societies worldwide and prioritizing action on adaptation, including ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation (EbA). However, despite the imperative need and noted benefits of adaptation actions, several barriers related to understanding, planning, and investment exist. These are hindering the wider uptake and scaling-up of adaptation, including EbA.
To scale up and increase awareness of EbA a new Global EbA Fund was launched in March 2021. This new fund is being co-implemented by IUCN and UNEP, and it is a fast-response small grants mechanism to promote innovative and catalytic approaches to EbA.
To support the implementation of the new fund, the Global Adaptation Network set out to convene global and regional networks in the Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin American and Caribbean regions to raise awareness and address the barriers to scaling up EbA across different sector groups.
To carry out this work, the Global Adaptation Network conducted a stakeholder dialogue process from March to October 2021, which was a combination of an online survey on EbA barriers and several regional dialogues.
Through this participatory process, regional networks were mobilized, and in total, more than 120 practitioners and experts responded to the survey, and more than 500 people participated in the dialogues. The survey and some of the dialogues were available in English, French, and Spanish, allowing the Global Adaptation Network to reach more non-English speaking stakeholders.
The Global Adaptation Network thanks all those who completed the survey and participated in the dialogues, and we developed a report outlining the main findings and conclusions of this process.
You can access the report here.
For more information, please contact oscar.ivanova@un.org
