Implementation of a Strategic Framework for Scaling Up Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
Success factors and lessons learned from the EbA LAC program
The Scaling Up Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Measures in Rural Latin America (EbA LAC) initiative, implemented in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala, offered valuable insights into how EbA measures are scaled up in practice. This publication shares lessons learned regarding the success factors that enabled the scaling up of EbA in the three countries.
Key Messages
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Scaling up EbA measures is essential to strengthen climate resilience while advancing biodiversity conservation and climate action worldwide.
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In Latin America, scaling up EbA measures remains a high priority on the adaptation agenda.
Governments, civil society organizations, local communities, and scientific institutions have made significant progress in implementing ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) measures. However, scaling up EbA—meaning the ability to consolidate, replicate, and institutionalize these experiences at the territorial and sectoral levels and within public policy and investment frameworks—remains a challenge.
Scaling up EbA, a type of nature-based solution, requires not only sound technical interventions but also robust enabling environments, including political leadership, adaptive governance, capacity building, sustainable financing, and the integration of scientific information with local and indigenous knowledge, among other key factors.
Against this backdrop, the Scaling Up Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Measures in Rural Latin America initiative, implemented in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala, offered valuable insights into how EbA measures are scaled up in practice. Based on the documented evidence from 18 cases, it is demonstrated that scaling up does not follow a single path, but rather manifests itself through multiple trajectories that combine vertical processes—associated with public policies, management tools, and institutional frameworks—as well as horizontal processes linked to replicating community, sub-national/territorial, and sectoral successful practices.
This publication shares lessons learned regarding the success factors that enabled the scaling up of EbA in the three countries, using a strategic framework that integrates the dimensions of governance, capacity building, and enabling conditions throughout the EbA mainstreaming cycle.
Participating experts
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