Nature-based climate adaptation solutions received a grant of 10 million euros

On 8 November 2021, at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) announced that it would provide an additional €10 million to the Global EbA Fund, a groundbreaking funding mechanism implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to support nature-based adaptation solutions to climate change. As a result, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment has invested a total of up to 30 million euros in the fund.

The Global EbA Fund was launched in March 2021 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and UN Environment, with support from the BMU International Climate Initiative (IKI). The Fund aims to accelerate the absorption and financing of ecosystem-based adaptation actions by providing seed capital to ecosystem-based catalytic and innovative adaptation actions. Meanwhile, the Global EbA Fund approved its first seven grants, ranging from coral reef protection in the Philippines to restoring riparian ecosystems to controlling erosion in Fiji. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is a strategy that uses biodiversity and ecosystem services to build the resilience of human communities to the impacts of climate change. It includes the protection, sustainable management and restoration of ecosystems such as forests, grasslands or wetlands to reduce the harmful effects of climate hazards, whether they are changes in rainfall patterns, changes in temperature, or intense storms.

Despite the cost-effectiveness of ecosystem-based adaptation as a strategy to combat climate change, to date only 5% of global climate finance flows are used for adaptation, of which only 1.4% are for nature-based adaptation solutions. The Global EbA Fund has now announced that it will approve grants totaling $1656115 over the next three years and carry out seven projects, which is also the fund's first project. Overall, this first group of seven projects will aim to improve the adoption, scalability and replicability of ecosystem-based adaptation interventions in different ecosystems in nine countries across five continents. These projects will demonstrate the economic benefits of ecosystem-based adaptation implementation, with a focus on local needs, synergies between ecosystem-based adaptation and other approaches, among others.

Please indicate the source and author when reprinting this article: Resources and Environment Dynamic Monitoring Express, Lanzhou Documentation and Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 22, 2021, compiled by Wei Yanhong.