Biodiversity: Innovation in Response to Climate Change

Beyond the scientific approach determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the management of biodiversity and climate change must be evaluated from both a conventional and innovative perspective. The conventional view highlights the vulnerability of biodiversity due to the impacts of climate change and its direct or indirect effects on ecosystem functionality, while the innovative view focuses on biodiversity as a solution for climate change through strategies of adaptation and mitigation that allow for an optimization of resilience capacities in the territory, thus favoring human well-being ¹.

All adaptation and mitigation strategies for climate change must esteem biodiversity and its ecosystem services for their intrinsic value and include economic, cultural, and social criteria. Also, recognizing the knowledge of local and indigenous communities strengthens processes of impact and decision making, as well as the existence of adaptative governance at varying territorial scales.

Ecosystem-based Adaptation

Source: Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development-Climate Change Direction

Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA)², considers that biodiversity is the major tool in increasing response capacity of ecosystems in the face of climate change. Under this perspective, people, economy, and culture all are part of ecosystems. In this way ecological systems and socio-economic systems are linked. Such vision encourages integration to sustainable management, conservation, restoration, functional connectivity between ecosystems, and resilience, as strategies to reduce vulnerability of communities that depend on ecosystem goods and services.

Climate change is one of the major challenges to surpass in this century and it requires an analysis from various perspectives, strategies, and actions. In this sense, the Plan Nacional de Adaptación al Cambio Climático (National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change)³ acknowledges different views such as Adaptation based on Infrastructure, Adaptation based on Communities, and Adaptation based on Technology. These three are complementary and are used in conjunction with EbA to advance towards adaptation to climate change.

The challenge is not only that communities implement EbA measures, but also sectors, territorial entities, environmental authorities, and the private sector. Like in any process, an adaptive monitoring that evaluates how the management and sustainable use of ecosystems improves adaptation to climate change is necessary to improve the design of EbA measures. Colombia already has some instruments, such as National Communications, for this purpose. Currently, the Sistema Nacional de Indicadores de Adaptación (National System for Adaptation Indicators) is being developed in order to monitor the management and impact of actions that are happening at different scales in the territory.