Convenient solutions to an inconvenient truth: ecosystem-based approaches to climate change
This new book argues for the ecosystem-based approaches to mitigation and adaptation as a third essential pillar in national strategies to address climate change, as such strategies can offer cost-effective, sustainable solutions contributing to and complementing other national & regional adaptation strategies.
This 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, as such ecosystem-based strategies can offer cost-effective, proven and sustainable solutions contributing to, and complementing, other national and regional adaptation strategies. It highlights the need to replicate and scale up such interventions, including integrating protection of natural habitats into strategies to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters (such as floods and cyclones). The adaptation chapter addresses the issue of infrastructure for coastal defenses and flood control to reduce the vulnerability of human settlements to natural hazards and extreme climatic events and complement such as floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis. It also addresses: agriculture dependent populations, animal husbandry, informal forestry, and fisheries affected by droughts and high temperatures; the spread of invasive alien species, further threatening agricultural productivity and food security; water resources, melting glaciers, higher-intensity and more variable rainfall events; freshwater, and marine ecosystems.