Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is a known strategy for building climate resilience and enhancing the ecosystems that underpin the productivity of key socioeconomic sectors in Africa. EbA for agriculture is an approach used to build climate-resilient food systems; it encompasses climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and a broad range of other techniques. In light of mounting climate impacts and escalating degradation of ecosystems, the urgent need to scale up such climate-resilient approaches as EbA and CSA and safeguard future food systems cannot be overstated. And effective scaling-up calls for a break from classical approaches that view EbA and CSA as a silo climate resilience technique, and a move toward embracing a new paradigm that portrays them as part of an integrated composite solution to maximizing the productivity of agriculture and food systems in Africa for accelerated socio-economic transformation. This transformation is critical to achieving the goals of the Malabo Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recognizing ecosystems’ catalytic place in Africa’s socio-economic transformation and realization of these goals can provide the impetus for market-based incentives to expand EbA and such resilience approaches as CSA. Actualizing this integrated approach will require inclusive partnerships among complementary actors to bridge the requisite policy and nonpolicy gaps and foster practical means to achieve this integration. UN Environment is already fostering these inclusive, mutual, multistakeholder partnerships at the policy and operational levels by facilitating a country-driven policy and implementation framework through the Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA).
