Resilient ecosystems are vital to human well-being and are increasingly recognized as critical to supporting communities’ efforts to adapt to climate change. The governing bodies of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are encouraging parties to adopt ‘ecosystem-based adaptation’ (EbA) approaches, which utilize biodiversity and ecosystem services to support climate change adaptation. These approaches are wide-ranging and include mangrove restoration to buffer against storm surges; watershed management to protect against droughts and floods; rangeland management to prevent desertification, and sustainable management of fisheries and forests to ensure food security. This article examines the emergence of EbA in international legal frameworks for climate change and biodiversity and progress towards implementation. The EbA concept is potentially powerful in catalyzing international and national commitments to act due to its key defining features of a focus on societal adaptation rather than ecocentrism, and targeting of the immediate adaptation needs of the poorest and most vulnerable communities who are adversely affected by climate change. However, examination of national policy and practice in the two least developed countries, Samoa and Cambodia, reveals that institutional and legal barriers at the national level can pose significant challenges to operationalizing EbA to achieve adaptation objectives.
