Ecosystem based Adaptation – a new approach of adapting to climate change?

1. Environmental flow assessment (EFA) to evaluate the ecological, social and economic impacts of alternate flow regimes to build an evidence-base for water allocation decision options in Tanzania.
2. A systematic conservation plan on marine protected areas and mechanisms to support the development of communities based on explicitly modelled analysis of climate change at a local level in Papua New Guinea.
   
   These are instances of Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) defines EbA as the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Ecosystem-based adaptation uses the sustainable management, conservation, and restoration of ecosystems to provide services that enable people to adapt to both current climate variability and long-term change.
   
   On the ground it translates among other things into diversification into sustainable livelihoods for communities which are currently solely dependent on climate sensitive resources. This would in turn discourage the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and concomitantly increase the environmental resilience and thereby the ability of the environmental system to adapt to climate change.
   
   For the developed countries and even developing countries to a great extent, adapting to climate change has so far meant retrofitting of built environment, climate proofing of coastal infrastructure etc., but the EbA approach strives towards increasing the climate resilience of communities by decreasing their vulnerability to climate variability and climate change by strengthening the ecosystems. A functionally robust ecosystem with its allied ecosystem services can itself prove to be a bulwark between potential future climate disasters and the humanity. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment study the ecosystems provide us with a multitude of services classified as provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services.
   
   Already we have many projects being piloted in different parts of the country by many non-profits and research institutes which can be classified as EbA. Ecosystem restoration taken up by Green Coast through the plantation of 3,45,000 saplings of tropical dry evergreen forest species, economically important species and mangroves in 125 hactares, and the conservation of 15 hactares of sand dunes in Manakudi estuary, sustainable agriculture through System of Rice intensification (SRI) and concept of coastal bio-villages promoted by M.S.Swaminthan Research Foundation (MSSRF) to name a few. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with its partners has developed tools like CRiSTAL and SLED to help Community based Organizations (CBOs) and communities to plan, strategize and implement EbA. What is required at the moment is a more planned approach and institutionalization of the concept. EbA should be a process rather than a fragmented project based activity occuring in different temporal and spatial scales. It has to be a concerted effort between the multiple stakeholders viz. the state, the private sector, the civil society and above all the communities to realize the true potential of EbA.
   
   The draft on Green India Mission (a part of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change) released recently by the Indian government extensively talks about eco restoration and the importance of holistic improvement of ecosystems rather than greening per se. This Mission could be a great precursor on our path to a new systems thinking called the “ecosystems approach”.