Sreenath Subrahmanyam (ELP 2019) | Director, Institute of BioEcoScience, United States 

Several scientific research reports including that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, report that tens of thousands of people are already impacted by climate change. Food and water shortages have caused tremendous crises for people around the world, especially those from the developing countries. Forests play a crucial role in stabilizing the climate, sequestering nearly 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, protecting biodiversity and ecosystems, and helping support the livelihood of millions of people.

Important climate adaptation strategies include: identification and analysis of existing stressors, initiation of strategic zoning of land uses, better preparation for major ecological disturbances, identification & designation of reserves, and increased communication of knowledge to stakeholders. It is also critical for COP 28 to address several interlinked key leadership challenges before we successfully implement them. Some of them are (a) identification of specific, locally feasible conservation approaches; (b) understanding of ecological benefits, potential costs, and the difficulties in implementing strategies; and (c) improving capacity of decision makers in climate policy and research.

However, quantifying environmental susceptibility against adaptive capacity is the most critical of them all. Adaptive capacity is the innate ability of an ecosystem to adapt and positively respond to external stressors. In forest ecosystems, adaptive capacity is a strong indicator of its potential to persist over time, and through change. Furthermore, assessments of adaptive capacity are primarily useful in identifying strategies to mitigate impacts that result in intended ecological outcomes. 

There are several methods that result in a variety of descriptions of the ecosystems and their functions that lead to identification of divergent interventions. (1) Assessment of ecological adaptive capacity through larger scale models help synthesize national environmental policies; (2) Development of a framework for adaptive capacity, with reference to the environmental change, involving the administration at local scale, help highlight organizational and social requirements, necessary for developing ecological management tools. These participatory management techniques are successful in adaptive governance, especially in developing countries; (3) Adaptive capacity and resilience are deeply related. Therefore, a key leadership task is to establish a link between institutional capacity framework, improved mobilization capacity, and resilience.