2020 VISION FOR A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY
MELBOURNE SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY INSTITUTE
The Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) at the University of Melbourne, Australia, brings together researchers from different disciplines to help create a more sustainable society. It acts as an information portal for research at the University of Melbourne, and as a collaborative platform where researchers and communities can work together to affect positive change. This book can be freely accessed from MSSI’s website: www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au.
Cite as: Pearson, C.J. (editor) (2012). 2020: Vision for a Sustainable Society. Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne Published by Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute in 2012 Ground Floor Alice Hoy Building (Blg 162) Monash Road The University of Melbourne, Parkville Victoria 3010, Australia Text and copyright © Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher. A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the catalogue of the National Library of Australia at www.nla.gov.au 2020: Vision for a Sustainable Society, ISBN: 978-0-7340-4773-1 (pbk) Produced with Affirm Press www.affirmpress.com.au Cover and text design by Anne-Marie Reeves www.annemariereeves.com Illustrations on pages 228–231 by Michael Weldon www.michaelweldon.com Cover image © Brad Calkins | Dreamstime.com Proudly printed in Australia by BPA Print Group
Foreword
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he last two centuries have seen extraordinary improvements in the quality of human lives. Most people on earth today enjoy access to the necessities of life that was once available only to the elites. Most people enjoy longevity, health, education, information and opportunities to experience the variety of life on earth that was denied even to the rulers of yesteryear. The proportion of humanity living in absolute poverty remains daunting, but continues to fall decade by decade. The early 21st century has delivered an acceleration of the growth in living standards in the most populous developing countries and an historic lift in the trend of economic growth in the regions that had lagged behind, notably in Africa. These beneficent developments are accompanied by another reality. The improvements are not sustainable unless we make qualitative changes in the content of economic growth. The continuation of the current relationship between growth in the material standard of living and pressures on the natural environment will undermine economic growth, political
stability and the foundations of human achievement. The good news is that humanity has already discovered and begun to apply the knowledge that can reconcile continued improvements in the standard of living with reduction of pressures on the natural environment. The bad news is that the changes that are necessary to make high and rising standards of living sustainable are hard to achieve within our current political cultures and systems. Hard, but not impossible. That is a central message from this book, drawn out in Craig Pearson’s concluding chapter. This book introduces the reader to the many dimesions of sustainability, through wellqualified authors. Climate change is only one mechanism through which current patterns of economic growth threaten the natural systems on which our prosperity depend. It is simply the most urgent of the existential threats. Climate change is a special challenge for Australians. We are the most vulnerable of the
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developed countries to climate change. And we are the developed country with the highest level of greenhouse gas emissions per person. There are roles for private ethical decisions as well as public policy choices in dealing with the climate change challenge. This book is released at the time of ‘Rio+20’, a conference in Brazil to review the relatively poor progress we have made towards sustainability in the past 20 years, and soon after the introduction of Australia’s first comprehensive policy response to the global challenge of climate change. Australia’s emissions trading scheme with an initially fixed price for emissions permits comes into effect on 1 July 2012. The new policy discourages activities that generate greenhouse gases by putting a price on emissions. The revenue raised by carbon pricing will be returned to households and businesses in ways that retain incentives to reduce emissions. Part of the revenue will be used to encourage production and use of goods and services that embody low emissions. The policy has been launched in controversy. Interests that stand to gain from the discrediting of the policy argue that it is unnecessary either because the case for global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the associated climate change has not been proven, or that the new policy places a disproportionate burden on Australians. The health of our civilisation requires us to bring scientific knowledge to account in public policy. Everyone who shares the knowledge that is the common heritage of humanity has
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a responsibility to explain the realities to others wherever and whenever they can. The argument that the new policy places a disproportionate burden on Australians can be answered by seeking honestly to understand what others are doing. The critics of Australian policy argue that the world’s two largest national emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, are doing little or nothing to reduce emissions, so that it is either pointless or unnecessary for us to do so. China has advanced a long way towards achieving its target of reducing emissions as a proportion of economic output by 40 to 45 per cent between 2005 and 2020. It has done this by forcing the closure of emissions-intensive plants and processes that have exceptionally high levels of emissions per unit of output, by imposing high emissions standards on new plants and processes, by charging emissionsintensive activities higher electricity prices, by subsidising the introduction of low-emissions activities, and by new and higher taxes on fossil fuels. China has introduced trials of an emissions trading system in five major cities and two provinces. This adds up to a cost on business and the community that exceeds any burden placed on Australians by the new policies – bearing in mind that the revenue from Australian carbon pricing is returned to households and businesses. The US Government has advised the international community of its domestic policy target to reduce 2005 emissions by 17 per cent by 2020. President Barack Obama said
to the Australian Parliament that all countries should take seriously the targets that they had reported to the international community, and made it clear that the United States did so. United States efforts to reduce emissions are diffuse but far-reaching. They now include controls on emissions from electricity generators, announced in March 2012, effectively excluding any new coal-based power generation after the end of this year unless it embodies carbon capture and storage. From the beginning of next year they will include an emissions trading system in the most populous and economically largest state, California. The United States is making reasonable progress towards reaching its emissions reduction goals, with some actions imposing high costs on domestic households and businesses. Australia has now taken steps through which we can do our fair share in the international effort, at reasonable cost. It would be much harder and more costly to do our fair share without the policies that are soon to take effect. What Australians do over the next few years will have a significant influence on humanity’s prospects for handing on the benefits of modern civilisation to future generations. This book will help Australians to understand their part in the global effort for sustainability. Ross Garnaut University of Melbourne 15 April 2012
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Contents Foreword by Ross Garnaut Table of Contents
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Author Biographies
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Drivers
1
1 Population Rebecca Kippen and Peter McDonald
2
2 Equity Helen Sykes
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3 Consumption Craig Pearson
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4 Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change David Karoly
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5 Energy Peter Seligman
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People
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6
Ethics Craig Prebble
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7
Culture Audrey Yue and Rimi Khan
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Awareness and Behaviour Angela Paladino
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Local Matters Matter Kate Auty
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10 Public Wisdom Tim van Gelder
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11 Mental Health Grant Blashki
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12 Disease Peter Doherty
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13 Corporate Sustainability Liza Maimone
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14 Governance John Brumby
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Natural Resources
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15 Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Rodney Keenan
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16 Water Hector Malano and Brian Davidson
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17 Food Sunday McKay and Rebecca Ford
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18 Zero Carbon Land-Use Chris Taylor and Adrian Whitehead
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Cities
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19 Changing Cities Peter Newman and Carolyn Ingvarson
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20 Affordable Living Thomas Kvan and Justyna Karakiewicz
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21 Built Environment Pru Sanderson
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22 Infrastructure Colin Duffield
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23 Transport Monique Conheady
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24 Adaptive Design Ray Green
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25 Handling Disasters Alan March
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Outcomes
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26 Twenty Actions Craig Pearson
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Further Reading
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Index
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15 Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Rodney Keenan
C
limate change and other pressures on our society will increase the frequency and severity of hazards such as flooding, storms, bushfires and heatwaves. Coastal areas will be impacted by increasing sea levels and storm surges. Greater appreciation of how ecosystems work, and how they can buffer against hazards, will help address future uncertainty and disaster. Using ecosystems for protection from hazards is not a new idea; some of the earliest laws regulating forest use in Europe and Japan were implemented to manage and restore forests to protect mountain villages from avalanches and landslides. Increasingly, ecosystem-based adaptation is being promoted as a way of avoiding the impacts of climate change and providing benefits such as clean water, soil protection and biodiversity conservation. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) defines ‘ecosystem-based adaptation’ as ‘the sustainable management, conservation, and restoration of ecosystems in ways that enable people to adapt to the impacts of climate change’. It can maintain and increase resilience and reduce vulnerability of ecosystems and people in the face of the
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adverse effects of climate change. This article presents some examples of different situations where ecosystem restoration and management are contributing to climate change adaptation and discusses policy measures to facilitate their implementation.
What is biodiversity? The United Nations has declared 2011–20 the International Decade on Biodiversity. The aim is to halt and eventually reverse the loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is the total variability within living organisms. It can be applied at any level, but is usually the number of species (that we can measure, or consider important enough to measure) within a catchment or region, although in the case of the United Nations, its goal is global.
Coastal Mangrove Forests in Vietnam Vietnam is regularly impacted by coastal storms and typhoons. With climate change, higher sea levels and potentially greater intensity and frequency of storms, these impacts are likely to become considerably worse.
Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
As Colls and colleagues wrote in 2009, mangroves can guard against storm impacts by dissipating the energy and reducing the size of waves as a result of the drag forces exerted by their multiple roots and stems. For example, according to Quartel and others in their 2007 paper, mangrove forests can reduce wave heights by 5 to 7.5 times more than bare beach surfaces. They can also stabilise the sea floor, trap sediment and change the angle of slope of the sea bottom. Maintaining and restoring mangroves can also contribute to the effectiveness and stabilisation of other barriers such as dikes, and well-managed mangrove forests can provide direct-use benefits such as seafood, and timber for poles and local buildings. However, about 75 per cent of mangrove forests in Vietnam were lost during the American war, cleared for aquaculture or have become degraded through overharvesting. The task of replanting mangroves is significant. Mangrove restoration is not straightforward – the working conditions are difficult, the trees need to be grown to advanced size before planting and the initial planting density needs to be about 2000 stems per hectare. Better coastal planning can facilitate mangrove establishment. Manage-ment of activities higher in catchments that affect the long-term viability of mangroves, such as sediment elevation, nutrient runoff and pollution, can assist in facilitating the establishment and maintenance of mangrove forests.
Urban Heat Impacts and Water Use It is not only in coastal or forested areas that ecosystems can assist with adaptation to climate change. Higher temperatures arising from climate change and increased population density will cause rising heat loads, or ‘heat islands’, in cities. These will place greater stresses on urban communities, particularly older people and the very young who have limited capacity to regulate their body temperature. Heat loads in cities are exacerbated by the ‘urban heat island effect’ where heat is trapped by concrete buildings and hard road surfaces that radiate stored heat and keep overnight temperatures higher. Incorporating more grassy areas, parks, street trees and permeable surfaces into city environments can reduce the heat-load on buildings and people by providing shade and shelter as well as cooling through increased plant evapo-transpiration. This ‘green infrastructure’ can also include green walls and rooves incorporated into buildings that have a similar effect. The Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research is sponsoring a project being undertaken by the University of Melbourne and Monash University to identify areas in metropolitan Melbourne with the greatest heat-load using airborne infrared photography, combined with social information on the most vulnerable communities, to plan where green infrastructure can provide the greatest environmental and community benefits.
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Green infrastructure can also assist in mitigating impacts of storms and high rainfall events that could increase in some regions in a warming climate. For example, Grunwald in 2011 indicated how the city of Philadephia in the United States has developed a campaign to keep stormwater out of its drainage systems by using rain barrels and rain gardens, vegetated green roofs and permeable green roads, new trees and new parks. The goal is to capture runoff from one-third of the city’s impervious surfaces and make around 40 square kilometres of man-made urban area function more like a natural forest. A research team from Melbourne and Monash Universities are investigating new approaches to stormwater management that focus on improving the health of creeks and rivers in the Little Stringybark Creek catchment in outer urban Melbourne. A combination of water tanks, water gardens and woody vegetation in and around the creeks will reduce erosion and pollution and the cost of managing storm water as well as providing cooling benefits in hot weather and alternative sources of water during extended droughts. Creeks and rivers will function more as they did before urban development, increasing habitat quality and providing other benefits. More broadly, managing, restoring and protecting ecosystems can also contribute to sustainable water management in a changing climate. In their 2003 paper, Dudley and Stolten found that about one third of the world’s largest cities obtain a significant proportion of their drinking water directly
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from protected forested areas. Forest restoration and improved catchment management can improve water quality, increase groundwater recharge and save costs on water purification systems.
Integrating Woody Vegetation into Farming Systems Integrating restoration of woody vegetation into farm management can also assist farmers in adapting to climate change. Globally, farmers are at the forefront in responding to climate variability and longer-term changes. Easterling and others in 2007 reported that production of some crops and pastures may increase under moderate warming but farmers will be subject to additional stressors from lower water availability in some places or perhaps more rain and increased flooding in others. Climate change may result in reduced soil fertility and there is likely to be increased impacts of pests, diseases and weeds. Trees can be used to reduce risk, increase resilience and create complementary income opportunities when there is reduced or more variable income from traditional crops. Trees, in combination with restoration of wetlands and other forms of water management, can be used to ameliorate the effects of extreme storms and unpredictable climatic events on agricultural production and provide shelter for stock from increased heat. By diversifying income sources and creating products and services that are independent of traditional agricultural markets, farming may be less susceptible to climatic variability.
Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
• Mainstream adaptation and ecosystem services • Linking ecosystem and other sectors in adaption • Develop innovative funding • Influence international policies • Strengthen the links between adaptation and mitigation • Transfer power to local communities for adaptation • Recognise local diversity • Promote environmental education
Policymakers
Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
• Inform policy-makers about local needs • Define and implement adaptation • Reward ecosystem service providers
• Dialogue with scientists • Understand scientific uncertainties • Finance research and monitoring
Society (local communities, private sector, civil society)
• Invest and participate in science
• Dialogue with policy makers • Support policy design and negotiations
Scientists
• Quantify and value ecosystem services • Evaluate uncertainties • Work at local scales • Communicate results to non-scientists • Increase multidisciplinarity
• Involve society in research • Increase social science representation
The links required between scientists, policy-makers and society to support the implementation of ecosystem-based adaptation. Source: Vignola et al. 2009.
Well-designed agroforestry ecosystems can maintain production during wetter and drier years. Using drought-tolerant tree species with deep root systems that can explore a greater soil depth can help farmers maintain production when annual crops relying on regular rainfall might fail. Incorporating trees into farming systems can increase soil porosity and water infiltration and reduce runoff. Consequently, there could be more water in the soil profile during seasons of low rainfall. Well-designed belts of trees can also reduce wind impacts on pasture and crops, maintaining or increasing production if winds get stronger.
In some cases the products from trees can be of higher value on an annual basis than agricultural commodities. In a farm-based study in the Otway Ranges in Victoria, farmers Andrew and Hugh Stewart found that timber products provided a higher economic yield over a 10–15 year period than grazing, and that planting 17 per cent of their property with woody vegetation resulted in no evident reduction in their lamb and wool production. This type of farm forestry has provided water quality, landscape, habitat and animal productivity benefits. Plantings include development of riparian buffer strips and linkage of wildlife corridors. Fences have been
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Top: Ecosystem restoration in northeast Thailand being undertaken by the Forest Restoration Research Unit at the University of Chiang Mai. Bottom: Integrating trees and pasture or crops can increase production and provide many other benefits in adapting to climate change. Source: Rod Keenan.
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Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
moved out wider than conventional landcare plantings with the addition of wide-spaced trees for high pruning for sawlog production. A key element of the design is land-class fencing, which largely defines the location and purpose of the revegetation. Integration of commercial and non-commercial trees and shrubs tends to be along drainage lines and land-class boundaries. Stream sides and drainage lines have been revegetated with a choice of species and pattern of planting that provide environmental benefits as well as prospects for commercial timber production. Adopting a long-term view has improved sustainable agricultural production, reduced climate change risks and increased income security with commercial trees playing an integral role as superannuation. In a study in a drought-prone region of Kenya, the accumulated income from tree products was estimated to exceed the accumulated value of crop yield lost through competition, with the assumption of 50 per cent crop failure due to drought. Planting the right species with strong demand for a range of products, high value timber and the ability to produce this range of products continuously provided good financial returns in a relatively short time.
Win-Win Adaptation and Mitigation Mitigation and adaptation are often seen as independent strategies in policy and planning. Many of the examples of ecosystem-based adaptation can contribute to both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping people
and landscapes adapt to climate change. This can also help build greater diversity into landscapes and farming systems, increasing the resilience of natural and managed landscapes to different stressors such as fire, insect pests, diseases or other hazards.
Policy Requirements While the value of natural ecosystems in processes for adapting to climate change is being increasingly recognised, how can policymakers facilitate the integration of these principles into adaptation policies? In 2009, Vignola and others identified a number of approaches for improving policy in this area. Incorporating ecosystem management and adaptation to climate change into national development policies is an important starting point. Ecosystem degradation as a result of economic or industrial development will increase vulnerability and reduce adaptive capacity. Future societies will have more limited options for adaptation if processes in natural ecosystems are impaired or dysfunctional. Policy-makers should create and enforce linkages between ecosystem managers and vulnerable sectors benefiting from ecosystem services. This could occur through education and outreach to raise societal awareness about the relevance of ecosystem services, or through market-based approaches where those benefiting from the services provided by natural ecosystems pay for the management to provide those services. While climate change is a global issue, requiring global responses and national policy
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support, adaptation is ultimately a local process. As indicated in the box below, in the future scenario in northern Thailand, promotion and implementation of ecosystem-based adaptation is best managed by those with a direct interest in the health of their ecosystems and the services they provide. Communities should be actively involved in designing and implementing strategies for ecosystem-based adaptation as part of their local planning. This will require building an increased capacity to understand what Tim van Gelder calls ‘public wisdom’
(Chapter 10) within communities, recognising current power differentials and creating more equitable partnerships between communities and public and private actors in deciding on appropriate development pathways and the implementation of adaptation responses. NGOs can play a role in strengthening the capacity of populations their rights and values in the design of development and adaptation plans. As also demonstrated in the scenario, many of the ecosystem management actions to meet adaptation objectives will require
Ecosystems save lives The call rang out around the hills as Thanom woke. There had been heavy rain for days. He looked out his window and during the night a large mudslide had gouged a deep ravine in the slopes above, bringing down a dense tangle of scrub and mud. Thanom looked around and his neighbours’ houses all looked to be in good shape. They had survived the deluge. Thanom’s village, in the headwaters of the Chao Phraya River in northern Thailand, had been protected by a belt of forest established by the Ecosystem Restoration Service 30 years earlier, back in the early 2020s. This service, supported by international climate adaptation funds, had provided expertise, training and resources for local people to plan for increased flooding under climate change by restoring hillslope forests. Over the past 20 years they had gradually reforested 70 per cent of the hillslopes above their villages, relocated houses from exposed areas, and established riverside vegetation and restored some of the floodplain functions along streams with wetlands and barriers. Restoring forest and river ecosystems in this way was much cheaper than engineering works. Villagers could also collect medicinal plants, bamboo shoots and other foods during drought periods and harvest timber for local use and sometimes sale when crop yields were low. Automated systems higher in the catchments provided rapid warnings to local of flash flooding and the villagers had access to sophisticated flood mapping to manage risks and guide location of roads and houses. Despite a 30 per cent increase in high rainfall events, many fewer lives were lost and there was less disruption to people, services and the economy than earlier in the century when national and world leaders dithered over how (or even if) they should take preventative measures against climate change.
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funding. In recent United Nations Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) negotiations, an international adaptation fund has been proposed to help developing countries meet their adaptation challenges such as rising sea levels, increasing temperatures, more frequent or lengthy droughts, more severe flooding or changing ocean currents, and impacts on marine resources. Market-based arrangements such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) can complement international adaptation funding for management and protection of those ecosystem’s that provide immediate service benefits such as watershed protection or carbon sequestration. Policy-makers need to create an institutional environment that facilitates agreements between users and providers of ecosystem services.
ACTIONS FOR 2020 Successfully adapting to climate change is not just about building stronger bridges or bigger levee banks; it is about communities and ecosystems. Adapting to climate changes will require foresight and leadership. Successful adaptation will require strategic thinking, resourcefulness, creativity, collaboration and effective communication involving meaningful conversations within the community about what we value and what we might be prepared to lose. We need to talk about how to overcome barriers to understanding, planning for and managing the impacts of climate change. Like sustainability, adaptation is not an endpoint, but a journey. We need institutions,
societies, communities and indi-viduals that are continually adapting to a changing and uncertain set of environmental, social and economic conditions. While complex, adaptation can be seen as a social learning process. It requires a capacity for individuals and society to identify potential future changes and what it means for them. This will require agreement on common goals that allow us to cope with or benefit from the challenges that future climates will bring. Managing our natural ecosystems effectively and intelligently can be a big contributor to those goals. This can be best achieved not by creating more large ‘protected areas’, where the goal is to have little human interaction with natural systems, but by designing and establishing integrated, multi-functional ecosystems that provide for climate protection, biodiversity conservation, human living spaces and the production of food and fibre to meet human needs. Other chapters have made specific recommendations about how people, or our institutions, should change to become adaptable and more sustainable. My one specific recommendation for action to enhance ecosystem-based adaptation is to establish the International Forest Ecosystem Restoration Service and set a global target to restore natural species composition and ecosystem function to 20 per cent of deforested areas by 2030, focusing on situations that provide the best protection for people and nature from future climate risks.
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Further Reading Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Colls, A., Ash, N., Ikkala, N. (2009). Ecosystem-based Adaptation: a natural response to climate change. Gland, Switzerland, IUCN. Dudley, N., Stolton, S., eds. (2003). Running pure: the importance of forest protected areas to drinking water. Gland, Switzerand, WWF/World Bank Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use. Easterling, W., et al. (2007). Food, fibre and forest products. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Parry, M., et al. eds. Cambridge University Press, 273–313. IUCN (2008). Ecosystem-based adaptation: An approach for building resilience and reducing risk for local communities and ecosystems. Submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Quartel S., et al. (2007). Wave attenuation in coastal mangroves in the Red River delta, Vietnam, J. Asian Earth Sci., 29, 576–584 Verchot, L., et al. (2007). Climate Change: Linking Adaptation and Mitigation through Agroforestry - Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. 12: 901–918. Vignola, R., Locatelli, B., Martinez, C., Imbach, P. (2009). Ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change: what role for policy-makers, society and scientists? Mitig. Adapt. Strateg. Glob. Change 14, 691–696.