Convenient Solutions to an Inconvenient Truth: Ecosystem-Based Approaches to Climate Change

Global warming and changes in climate will have severe and lasting impacts on national efforts to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable development. Some of the world’s poorest countries and communities are the most vulnerable and are already suffering the consequences. Yet often these countries are rich in natural capital, ecosystems, and biodiversity that can contribute to solutions as they can to climate change. Biodiversity is the foundation and mainstay of agriculture, forests, and fisheries. Biological resources provide the raw materials for livelihoods, agriculture, medicines, trade, tourism, and industry. Forests, grasslands, freshwater, and marine and other natural ecosystems provide a range of services, often not recognized in national economic accounts but vital to human welfare: regulating water flows and water quality, flood control, pollination, decontamination, carbon sequestration, soil conservation, and nutrient and hydrological cycling. Current efforts to address climate change focus mainly on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly through cleaner energy strategies, and on attempting to reduce vulnerability of the communities at risk by improving infrastructure to meet new energy and water needs. This book book sets out a compelling argument for including ecosystem-based approaches to mitigation and adaptation as a third essential pillar in national strategies to address climate change. Such ecosystem-based strategies can offer cost-effective, proven and sustainable solutions contributing to, and complementing, other national and regional adaptation strategies.

Ecosystem-based adaptation is a win-win situation: it simultaneously addresses the challenge of climate change and protects biodiversity and ecosystem services, which are essential for human well-being. Development agencies, countries, and the Conventions on Biological Diversity and Climate Change need to recognize that conserving and restoring ecosystems is a cost-effective and socially responsible approach to both mitigating and adapting to climate change, while providing communities with the ecosystem services essential for human welfare. --- Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor, Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, U.K. and Professor of Environmental Sciences, Director of Strategic Development, University of East Anglia, U.K.

We need constant reminding that safeguarding and restoring the biodiversity of natural ecosystems are essential and highly cost-effective ways of mitigating climate change and reducing our vulnerability to its inevitable impacts. This engaging book provides a compelling case for the central role of ecosystem management in coping with climate change. It is essential reading for people involved in policy, research, and implementation. --R.M. Cowling, Professor of Botany, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

As our understanding expands on the widespread implications of anthropogenic climate change, our recognition of the interconnections between biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate change mitigation and adaptation comes to the forefront. As this book argues, if we are to meet the unprecedented climate change challenges, we must make use of all available resources, including those provided by nature: genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity. Linking the dual challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss is integral to the goals and objectives laid out in Rio. --- Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya