Risk Wise

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Ecosystems and community resilience:

the co-benefits of partnerships

Glenn Dolcemascolo, Jen Stephens and Andrew Morton, United Nations Environment Programme;

Carolin Schaerpf, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

cosystems are our lifeline; they are the basis for human

well being and human security. In addition to their well-

known contribution to livelihoods, healthy ecosystems can

reduce vulnerability to natural hazards, and they are our first

line of defence in adapting to climate change. Protecting these

vital services will take the combined efforts of disaster managers,

development practitioners and environmental managers. This

article begins to consider the benefits of adopting an integrated

approach to the issues of ecosystem management, sustainable

development, disaster risk reduction and climate change adap-

tation, and points to the need for stronger partnership between

practitioners and stakeholders in these fields.

Over the last decade, the global community has come to recognize

that the ever-increasing impact of natural hazards such as floods, wild-

fires, hurricanes and earthquakes poses serious challenges to

development. In addition to the devastating toll measured in human

lives and suffering, disasters erode, and in many cases, reverse hard-

earned gains in terms of political, social and educational progress, as

well as infrastructure and technological development. Often it is the

poorest and least developed countries that are hardest hit. Guided by

the ‘Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the resilience

of nations and communities to disasters’, the global community is

moving to reduce disaster risk as an integral and necessary compo-

nent of sustainable development and climate change adaptation.

Environmental degradation

The

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)

, which

involved the work of more than 1,360 experts world-

wide, provides compelling evidence that ecosystems are

essential for human well being through the services they

provide. These ‘ecosystem services’, or the benefits

people obtain from ecosystems, include provisioning of

products such as food, fuel and fibre; regulating services

such as climate regulation and disease control; and non-

material benefits such as the spiritual or aesthetic.

The demand for ecosystem services has grown at an

unprecedented rate. Between 1960 and 2000 the world

population doubled to 6 billion people and the global

economy increased more than six-fold. Increased

demand for services (food production increased roughly

2.5 times; water use doubled; wood harvests for pulp

and paper production tripled) corresponds with

dramatic changes in the Earth’s ecosystems. The last two

decades alone have witnessed the loss of 35 per cent of

global mangroves. The MEA reports that forests have

now effectively disappeared in 25 countries and another

29 have lost more than 90 per cent of their forest cover.

In parallel, work by many organizations within the

environmental community has advanced a broader

understanding of the linkages between the health of the

environment and the extent of human loss, suffering

and economic damage resulting from natural hazards.

Healthy ecosystems provide natural defences; for

example, wetland ecosystems function as natural

sponges that trap and slowly release surface water;

mangroves, dunes and reefs create physical barriers

between communities and coastal hazards, and forests

play a critical role in soil stabilization and influence the

risk of floods and landslides. Simply stated, healthy

ecosystems can reduce human vulnerability to natural

hazards – degraded environments commonly amplify

the negative impacts.

The need to reverse environmental losses and the

attendant consequences on poverty are reflected in the

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly

MDG 7 which calls for, among others, integration of the

principles of sustainable development into national poli-

cies and programmes; a reversal in losses of

environmental resources, and the reduction of biodi-

versity loss.

Cooperative efforts to plant and conserve mangroves in places like

Indonesia protects an important ecosystem service for local residents

Image: UNEP