Healthy Planet Healthy People: What does adaptation mean for ecosystems and why does it matter to people? Recording

Saturday, 12th November 2022

Ecosystems, including the biodiversity they support and the essential services they provide for people are vulnerable to climate change. This vulnerability is exacerbated by the degraded and fragmented state of many natural ecosystems so protection and restoration are an essential element of building resilience of both people and nature. Effective conservation of 30-50% of the earth surface is needed to maintain resilience at a planetary scale. This is an issue which cuts across both the UNFCCC and the Convention on biological diversity. At a local and national level, conservation planning and maintenance of ecosystem services will increasingly require adaptation to reduce the risks from climate change and there is an increasing body of scientific evidence to support this.
This session will present main findings on adaptation options for conserving biodiversity and on ecosystem-based adaptation for people from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report. It will cover the large-scale issues of conserving natural systems at a planetary scale to build resilience to climate change, the need for conservation itself to adapt and the opportunities to reduce climatic risks to people, through what are sometimes termed nature-based solutions. Talks by IPCC experts will also cover the links between human health and nature in the context of climate change and nature and provide a short case study of Africa. As well as considering the opportunities the session will also discuss the limits to these  approaches and conclude with questions from the audience.