Environmental Law

Climate Change

Global biodiversity faces severe threats from climate change in the form of rising temperatures, floods, droughts, severe weather incidents, deforestation and desertification.
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The impacts of climate change are particularly devastating for poor and vulnerable people especially dependent on their environment and natural resources for sustainable development. As it is already too late to rely entirely on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions to safeguard biodiversity and livelihoods from climate impacts, governments and institutions will need to develop adaptive capacity in order to ensure resilience of humans and natural resources.

Addressing this challenge, the ELC and the IUCN Eastern and Southern African Regional Office in conjunction with authorities and stakeholders at a national level in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia undertook an effort in building national capacity to adapt biodiversity and natural resource laws and governance to climate change, as well as to identify and enhance synergies in international biodiversity and natural resource law and policy.

Together with the IUCN Regional Office for Mesoamerica, the ELC has been implementing a project entitled “Climate Change Governance Capacity: Building regionally and nationally tailored ecosystem-based adaptation in Mesoamerica” in Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and Mexico since 2010.

The project is to develop climate change governance capacity in the water sector through applied research, awareness-raising and increased public participation. Major progress has been made in the past years on field demonstration of climate change adaptation measures in project countries.

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