Ecosystems – reducing risks and adapting to climate change

Ecosystems contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change by providing “services” for mankind, such as flood protection and the conservation of soil fertility. In many cases, however, the benefits of these services are either not clearly proven, or there are no studies that actually quantify the results and their effectiveness on adaptation to climate change. The project compiled three studies that examined the interdependencies of coastal protection & risk reduction, floodplain conservation & flood mitigation, fisheries, food security and climate change. The results have been presented at international conferences. The project was also committed to strengthen climate resilience through national and global efforts and anchor ecosystem-based adaptation in order to cope with natural disasters. It also promoted discussions regarding the importance and cost-effectiveness of EbA, creating interfaces between the issues of adaptation, risk reduction and biodiversity conservation.

Project data

IKI funding: 894,838.42 €
Duration: 03/2016 till 06/2021
Status: completed
Implementing organisation: The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Europe gGmbH

Skip to Project data

State of implementation/results

Project completed.
The project was invited to present the results of this project at a UNEP Conference in Bonn in February 2019. The conference was called “PEDRR ecosystems for adaptation and disaster risk reduction; International Science-Policy Workshop, Bonn Germany 12-14 February 2019”. On 12th of February the TNC project lead moderated a session titled: Financing and Insurance Dialogue; with experts from MCII, MunichRe and InsuResilience. as well as Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.
The project was invited to give in April 2019 a lecture at Amherst College to environmental economics master students, US (per webinar) on the same topic, present results from this IKI project.
The project also presented the work at the CAPTURE colloquium at the University of Bremen and at Bonn University.
The project has published numerous public op-eds and blogs:
- Beck, M. W. & R. Bendick. 2018. Generating savings from our most cost-effective coastal defenses
- The Hill. (thehill.com/…)
- Beck, M. W. 2018. Coral reefs and mangroves save billions of dollars in flood damage. Lloyd’s City Risk Index. August 7. (cityriskindex.lloyds.com/…)
- Beck, M.W., G. M. Lange, S. Narayan. 2018. The miracle of mangroves for coastal protection in numbers. May 31. The World Bank (blogs.worldbank.org/…)
- Beck, M. W. 2017. Natural barriers are a key defense against storms like Harvey and Irma. The Hill September 18. (thehill.com/…)
- M.W. Beck & S. Narayan. 2017. The Flood Reduction Benefits of Wetlands. The Scientist, August 31. (www.the-scientist.com/…)
- Tercek, M. & M. W. Beck. 2017. Mangroves: A Star Player in The Coastal Protection Game. Huffington Post, August 9. (www.huffpost.com/… )
- M.W. Beck & JB Crozet. 2017. Coastal Wetlands and Flood Damage Reduction: Can Insurance Save Wetlands? Triple Pundit, February 2. (www.triplepundit.com/…). This work has received significant media attention. For example, the recent coral reef paper alone was picked up by 31 news outlets and tweeted to more than 600,000 people. This ranked it among the top 2% of papers receiving public attention in the past year. www.altmetric.com/…
- Some of the IKI supported work was included in a feature length piece in Scientific American- www.scientificamerican.com/…