Pitch
Maintaining healthy ecosystems is a crucial step for sustainable development, mitigation and adaptation to global climate change.
Description
Summary
In the face of climate change, ecosystem degradation and diminishing ecosystem services are likely to undermine people’s ability to cope with and adapt to current and expected impacts (Mercer, et al., 2012). Consequently, Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) has emerged as a cost-effective adaptive strategy to address the role of ecosystems in minimizing climatic impacts on human systems (Locatelli and Pramova, 2015). Ecosystem-based Adaptation is defined as ‘‘the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people and communities adapt to the negative effects of climate change at local, national, regional and global levels’’ (Munang, et. al, 2013a, p. 35).
Therefore, this project proposal shows a multifaceted approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation anchored on a number of strategies. These include: 1. the protection of riparian forests to control soil erosion and regulate the flow of water; 2. agroforestry; and 3. climate smart agriculture.
Applying EbA using these three strategies has a great potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change. Further, EbA can lead to improving the livelihoods of people who constantly depend on natural resources such as water, forests and soils. Once, these approaches succeed at a local landscape scale, they can be up-scaled to