Global EbA Fund 2023

The Global EbA Fund is now open for application. In 2023 the Global EbA Fund introduced two funding tracks: a general EbA project proposals track and a thematic proposals track. The Global EbA Fund accepts and reviews submissions under the General EbA project proposals track year-round and makes biannual funding decisions.

Implemented by IUCN and UNEP with funding from the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV), the Global EbA Fund is a catalytic funding mechanism for supporting innovative approaches to EbA to create enabling environments for its mainstreaming and scaling up.

By supporting catalytic climate change adaptation initiatives, the Fund will help overcome barriers to upscaling EbA, address knowledge gaps, pilot innovative EbA approaches, engage in strategic EbA policy mainstreaming, and incentivize innovative finance mechanisms and private sector EbA investment.

Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) is a nature-based solution that harnesses biodiversity and ecosystem services to reduce vulnerability and build the resilience of human communities to climate change. EbA is defined as the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.

EbA encompasses a broad set of approaches that include the management of ecosystems and their services to reduce the vulnerability of communities to the impacts of climate change – such as the conservation, sustainable management, and restoration of ecosystems, such as forests, grasslands, wetlands, mangroves or coral reefs to reduce the harmful impacts of climate hazards including shifting patterns or levels of rainfall, changes in maximum and minimum temperatures, stronger storms, and increasingly variable climatic conditions.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are defined as actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems to address societal challenges, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefit which are crucial for sustainable development. The sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and scalability of NbS make them one of the best tools available to ensure the necessary transformative change to address climate change.

As an umbrella term, NbS encompasses approaches to working with nature to address climate change, such as ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) and ecosystem-based mitigation. NbS as an overarching concept can be used to support communication and mainstreaming of these different subsets across international, multilateral agreements/global frameworks and their audiences.

IUCN and UNEP support target countries in implementing EbA measures to meet their global plans and commitments and to help people to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. To support the Global EbA Fund, IUCN, and UNEP are drawing on their extensive existing networks, tools, and expertise, including Friends of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (FEBA) and the Global Adaptation Network (GAN).