Adaptation

1. Adaptation The evidence for the role of using protected areas in ecosystem-based adaptation strategies sue stolton equilibrium research

2. The challenge • Millennium Ecosystem Assessment estimates that 60% of global ecosystem services are degraded but • Ecosystem-based adaptation the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of adaptation strategies to help us cope with the adverse effects of climate change

3. The predictions • Health impacts spread of disease vectors, heat waves, lack of clean water • Food shortages and crop failures • Water shortages and reduced hydropower potential • ‘Natural disasters’: flooding, storms, drought, wildfire, insect spreads, ocean acidification

4. The role of protected areas • Protect: maintain ecosystem integrity, buffer local climate, reduce risks and impacts from extreme events such as storms, droughts and sea-level rise • Provide: maintain essential ecosystem services that help people cope with changes in water supplies, fisheries, disease and agricultural productivity caused by climate change

5. Ecosystem integrity Protected areas can help to reduce the impact of all but the largest natural disasters • Floods: providing space for floodwaters to disperse and absorbing impacts with natural vegetation • Landslides: stabilising soil and snow to stop slippage and slowing movement once a slip is underway

6. Storm surges: blocking storm surges with coral reefs, barrier islands, mangroves, dunes and marshes • Drought and desertification: reducing grazing pressure and maintaining watersheds and water retention in soil • Fire: limiting encroachment into fire-prone areas, maintaining traditional management systems

7. Natural resources Protected areas are proven tools for maintaining essential natural resources and services, which in turn can help increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of livelihoods in the face of climate change • Water: both purer water and (especially in tropical montane cloud forests) increased water flow

8. Fish resources: marine and freshwater protected areas conserve and rebuild fish stocks • Food: by protecting crop wild relatives to facilitate crop breeding and pollination services; providing sustainable food supplies for communities • Health: ranging from habitat protection to slow the expansion of vector-borne diseases that thrive in degraded ecosystems to access to traditional medicines

9. How to deliver • Understanding: encourage protected area managers to assess values and benefits • Planning: consider vital ecosystem services as well as biodiversity in gap analysis • Restoration and connectivity: major potential to restore ecosystem integrity • Resilience: improve ecosystem resilience particularly when ecosystem services are under threat

10. Economics: realise the theoretical – goods and services from an effectively managed representative protected area network could have a value of US$4,400-5,200 billion a year • Integrate: ensure protected areas included in national and local adaptation strategies and management plans

11. Our challenge • Integrity: ensure that protected areas are capable of delivering potential services • Adaptive management: protected area managers need to consider climate impacts and climate solutions in their planning and management • Trade-offs: guidance on how we manage for biodiversity and climate adaptation • Policy: linking biodiversity and climate change policy will help direct

12. Remember the message • Ecosystem-based adaptation uses biodiversity and ecosystem services in an overall adaptation strategy • Ecosystem-based adaptation strategies uses the sustainable management, protection and restoration of ecosystems to maintain services that help people cope with the effects of climate change • Protected areas are ideally placed to build ecosystem resilience and deliver ecosystem-based adaptation strategies