EbA Tools Navigator

The Reef Resilience Toolkit is an online information platform that provides the latest information, guidance and resources to help managers address the impacts of climate change and local threats to coral reefs. It also offers Reef Resilience Online Courses that have been designed to provide easy access to the latest science and strategies for managing coral reefs in a changing climate. Some of the courses are available in English, Spanish and French.

The Resilience and Adaptation Planning for Communities in Protected Areas manual outlines a community-based resilience and adaptation planning process, offering step-by-step guidance on initiating the planning process, engaging the community, and refining and implementing action plans. The approach addresses both developmental and environmental concerns in a changing climate, resulting in action plans developed by communities that can range from EbA to CbA options. It is aimed at practitioners from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), government departments, protected area management and research institutions with some experience in participatory work and a good understanding of climate change. The process described can be used to work with communities living in, and around, PAs of any management or governance type and can be tailored to different contexts. In addition, detailed instructions on undertaking the community-based workshop component of the process, along with several practical annexes, are suitable for training workshop facilitators.

Restoration Opportunities Optimization Tool (ROOT) is a software tool that helps decision makers evaluate trade-offs among different ecosystem services and visualize where investments in restoration could be made to optimize benefits for multiple landscape goals. It uses information about the potential impacts of restoration or management activities together with spatial prioritization or serviceshed maps to identify key areas for ecosystem service provision. It then uses multi-objective analysis to allow users to consider how to best manage tradeoffs between different project goals. ROOT has been applied in Costa Rica, Myanmar, Malawi, Colombia, and Brazil’s Espirito Santo State to help these countries optimize the placement of restoration activities for ecosystem services in national and subnational conservation, development, and agricultural objectives in support of increased ecological function to benefit people and livelihoods.

The Restoration Resource Platform is an online platform for exchanging knowledge and experience through ecological restoration projects, publications, and other resources from around the world. A searchable, crowd-sourced database, it already includes over 215 projects and 2,000 resources ranging from peer-reviewed articles to technical manuals and webinars. The RRC is a unique collection of ecological information. The entire database is publicly accessible, serving as a clearinghouse for restoration practitioners and consultants, as well as researchers, educators, and students.

The ‘Knowing the What and the How’ report describes Results-Based Management (RBM) within the UNDP context but is useful for non-UNDP projects as well. It explains inputs, outcomes, outputs and impact, and discusses the impact of focusing on results in project management and indicator development. Illustrates how these concepts are used in the development of a Strategic Results Framework (SRF), a top-down and bottom-up approach.

Saved Health/Saved Wealth is an approach to quantify the benefits of adaptation measures in terms of avoided economic damages, illnesses and mortality. It can be used a priori based on scenarios to select the most promising adaptation options, or as an evaluation tool for ongoing or completed adaptation projects. Its methodology compares a baseline situation (economic assets and life expectancy) with economic and health losses that have been avoided through adaptation. The calculation requires data on possible health impacts (Disability-Adjusted Live Years: DALY) and/or economic impacts as well as assumptions about the counterfactual (what would have happened without adaptation). To limit complexity, the approach is typically applied to a single climate change impact such as flooding. A pilot application has been undertaken for a coastal protection project in Viet Nam. The methodology is described in detail in the publication and illustrated by comparing two adaptation options in Viet Nam: building a dyke or planting mangroves. An excel tool is provided for calculation of Saved Health and Saved Wealth. A special feature of the Saved Health/Saved Wealth approach is that it can also be used to estimate adaptation benefits before a project starts based on scenarios of climate change impacts.

The Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM) is a model that simulates the dominant processes involved in wetland conversions and shoreline modifications during long-term sea level rise. Map distributions of wetlands are predicted under conditions of accelerated sea level rise, and results are summarized in tabular and graphical form.

A seasonal calendar is a participatory tool to explore seasonal changes (e.g. gender-specific workload, diseases, income, expenditure, etc.). The charts resulting from the activity show monthly changes in climate (rainfall or temperature) or agricultural activities (agricultural hours worked, different activities undertaken, crop cycles). The calendars are useful in identifying planting and harvesting times, labour constraints and marketing opportunities, and results are discussed with communities.

SimCLIM is a software package that links data and models in order to simulate the impacts of climatic variations and change, including extreme climatic events on agriculture, health, coasts or water resources. SimCLIM is an “open-framework” system that can be customised and maintained by users and it contains tools for importing and analysing both spatial (monthly, seasonal) and time-series (hourly, daily or monthly) data.

SimCoast is a fuzzy logic rule-based expert system designed to enable researchers, managers and decision-makers to create and evaluate different policy scenarios for coastal zone management. It is interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral. It aims to combine traditional and advanced specialist knowledge about coastal zones with a set of reasoning and analytical tools.

Smart Urban Adapt is an online platform that integrates available data and models with visualisation tools and an interactive front end, in order to provide scenario-based evaluation for the generation of accredited urban development paths and resilience benchmarks for municipalities. It integrates previously separated urban subsystem models into large GIS data warehouses and combined emerging urban climate data sensing techniques. This platform will be leveraged by decision support tools for the cross-sectoral, multi-scale planning, management and operation of existing cities.

The Social Vulnerability Index measures the social vulnerability of U.S. counties to environmental hazards, covering three periods (2000; 2006-2010; 2010-2014). The index is a comparative metric that helps the examination of the differences in social vulnerability among counties. The index synthesizes 29 socio-economic variables, which the research literature suggests contribute to reduction in a community’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from hazards.

The Socioeconomic and Ecological Monitoring Toolkit brings together a simple range of methodologies to carry out regular, joint socioeconomic and ecological monitoring in Huraa Mangrove Nature Reserve (HMNR). It outlines the techniques that can be used to collect data and provides a framework for monitoring and analysis that can be used by individuals with no prior training in the field of socioeconomic and ecological monitoring.

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a small watershed to river basin-scale model to simulate the quality and quantity of surface and ground water and predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change. SWAT is widely used in assessing soil erosion prevention and control, non-point source pollution control and regional management in watersheds. It involves a range of components and software packages/extensions (e.g. ArcSWAT, QSWAT, VIZSWAT).

‘From the mountain pastures of Peru, to the coral reefs of Vanuatu…’
Ecosystem-based Adaptation is a topic of global relevance that is implemented successfully in a broad range of countries and ecosystems.
A new publication developed by GIZ under the PANORAMA initiative illustrates the diversity of EbA in practice – ‘from mountains to oceans’ – that can be found online at the PANORAMA — Solutions for a Healthy Planet platform (www.panorama.solutions).
A selection of 30 applied EbA measures (solutions) is presented along the following chapters:
1. Mountain, grassland and forest ecosystems
2. River, wetland and inland water ecosystems
3. Agro-ecosystems and drylands
4. Urban ecosystems
5. Marine and coastal ecosystems

SolVES 3.0 provides a public-domain tool for decision makers and researchers to evaluate the social values of ecosystem services and to facilitate discussions among diverse stakeholders regarding the trade-offs among ecosystem services. It is relevant for a variety of physical and social contexts, ranging from forest and rangeland to coastal and marine. It is designed to run together with Maxent maximum entropy modelling software.

The common application of Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) is to predict species ranges with climate data as predictors.

SDSM (Statistical DownScaling Model) is a decision support tool for assessing local climate change impacts using a robust statistical downscaling technique.

The Step-by-Step Guide for Considering Potential Climate Change Effects on Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Projects was developed to assist the user in the consideration of how climate change may affect proposed conservation projects and incorporating climate change considerations into plans. The guide is based on the assumption that it is prudent to evaluate how the targets of conservation projects might be affected by changing climatic conditions. These evaluations may help to determine how the resilience of a project may be increased and/or how a project may contribute to the wider system’s (e.g., watershed, coastal ecosystem) resilience.

STICS Quick Report Tool is an online decision tool that uses a map-based interface to quickly determine demographic and economic characteristics for a wide variety of coastal management jurisdictions in the United States of America. Available coastal management jurisdictions are dependent on selected data and include counties, states, estuaries, watersheds, floodplains, and select placed-based management programs. Users can download summary data and view relevant charts related to the data.

The Excel-based Support Tool for the Development of Business Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation supports the implementation of a framework to help companies in the elaboration of a strategy to adapt to climate change. The framework is designed to help companies handle risks, increase their resilience, and leverage market opportunities, while strengthening partnerships and developing cooperation with other players, such as governments, businesses, communities, and trade associations, also subject to climate change challenges. The tool comprises a series of worksheets that guides the user through the different stages of strategy design including:
– Diagnosis (internal environment, climate scenario, risk and opportunity assessment)
– Planning (adaptation options, adaptation plan, agreement partnerships and resources)
– Implementation (actions and monitoring, assessment and adjustments, communications)

The Excel-based Tool for the Eloboration of Strategies to Adapt to Climate Change Targeted at Civil Society Organisations supports the implementation of a framework to organise and systematise information needed to understand and manage risks from climate change. The tool comprises a series of worksheets that guides the user through the different stages of strategy development:
– Project overview
– Understanding the climate
– Prioritising risks and opportunities
– Analysing adaptation options
– Defining an action plan
– Connections an partnerships
– Implementing actions
– Reflecting and learning
– Thinking of continuity

The STAR Tools are a set of online tools for surface temperature and surface run-off that allow users to assess the potential of green infrastructure in adapting their areas to climate change. The focus is on the Northwest of England though they can also be applied to other contexts, at the neighborhood scale.

The online Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) Toolbox has modules (including links to tools, case studies and further reading) in a number of adaptation relevant areas, for example, including: adaptation and mitigation; vegetation fire management; mountain forests; and forest restoration and rehabilitation.

SLED is a dynamic approach, developed by IUCN and partners, to facilitate adaptation among communities dependent on natural resources sensitive to climate change, based on lessons of past livelihoods research projects and worldwide experience in livelihood improvement and participatory development practice. SLED also helps to identify and address the wider policies, institutions and processes that should work to enable livelihood development. In addition, it offers an opportunity for both conservation concerns and poverty reduction concerns to be addressed together.

These technical guidelines, which elaborate on the initial guidelines for the national adaptation plan (NAP) process adopted by COP, are issued by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Expert Group (LEG) as part of the UNFCCC process. They build on lessons learned from countries already developing NAPs and strategies and offer a range of options for dealing with each element of the NAP process, drawing on best available knowledge.

The TESSA Toolkit (developed by 6 organisations) gives guidance on low-cost methods to evaluate the benefits people receive from nature at particular sites, in order to generate information that can be used to influence decision making. It seeks a balance between simplicity and utility of developing convincing information for decision-makers and therefore does not consider some of the more advanced concepts in ecosystem services. This is so that it can be used by non-experts, yet still provide scientifically robust information. The methods in the toolkit are designed for users from developing and developed countries, and across all land-based and wetland habitats.

The Adaptive Water Resource Management Handbook provides an introduction to the concepts of adaptive water management and adaptive management in general. Specific tools and instruments for adaptive management are also provided along with several case studies to provide practical information to the user.

The Biocultural Heritage Conceptual Framework is designed to assess the conditions and trends affecting traditional knowledge and the responses needed to address these. The concept of collective biocultural heritage has proved useful for action research on traditional knowledge in different contexts.

The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) is designed to assess private sector dependence and impact on ecosystems and the possible ramifications. It consists of a structured methodology that helps managers proactively develop strategies to manage business risks and opportunities arising from their company’s dependence and impact on ecosystems. It is a tool for strategy development and environmental assessment. Businesses can either conduct an Ecosystem Services Review as a stand-alone process or integrate it into their existing environmental management systems. In both cases, the methodology can complement and augment the environmental due diligence tools companies already use.

The Genetic Improvement of Forage Grasses and Legumes to Enhance Adaptation of Grasslands to Climate Change summarises the targets and approaches plant breeding programmes should adopt to enable grasslands to adapt to climate change whilst realising their potential contributions to food security and reducing the environmental impact of livestock agriculture. The focus is on the following major challenges: developing grassland crops with improved drought tolerance and enhanced water use efficiency; improving tolerance of saline soils; tolerance of floods and related consequences of changes in rainfall patterns; and maintaining nutrient use efficiency and forage quality.

The Knowledge Navigator is a categorised dataset of climate change platforms covering adaptation, mitigation and development. The tool is accessed through a web-based interactive tool, called a widget.

The Logframe Handbook discusses the rationale and essential elements of the logframe for practitioners. While providing guidelines for World Bank use, the handbook is also generic enough for use by clients and consultants.

The online National Tree Benefit Calculator (beta version) allows anyone to make a simple estimation of the benefits that individual street-side trees provide. This tool is based on i-Tree’s street tree assessment tool called STREETS. With inputs of location in the USA, species and tree size, users will get an understanding of the environmental and economic value trees provide on an annual basis.

The Ocean and Climate Change: Tools and Guidelines for Action gives science-based action recommendations relevant to international and national climate change implementation processes. It provides an overview of the interactions between the ocean and climate and describes the impacts of climate change on the marine ecosystems and the goods and services they provide human society. Further, it outlines a set of recommendations for marine-related mitigation and adaptation policy and implementation actions. The publication further stresses ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) as a means to improve social and ecosystem resilience to global ocean and climate change. Carefully designed marine protected areas and risk reduction management are included as means to reduce vulnerability of social and natural systems to future change.

The Resilience Adaptation and Transformation Assessment Framework (RAPTA) provides a framework to increase focus on resilience during project planning and to help project and programme developers apply resilience concepts across a wide range of project types. The process contains a set of seven linked components. These guidelines provide step-by-step guidance for applying these components in a flexible, iterative manner through the various phases of the project cycle. The guidelines are particularly relevant for agricultural systems, but RAPTA’s concepts and approach are applicable across the sustainable development agenda.

This report presents the most reliable and up-to-date information currently available on the spatial extent and recent changes in mangrove distribution in the Western Indian Ocean region.

The Stocktaking for National Adaptation Planning (SNAP) Tool provides a snapshot of the planning capacities that are currently available and intended in a country. It thus helps to identify the country’s point of departure for initiating the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process. The core element of the SNAP tool is an assessment of the country’s needs and capacities, which allows for a strategic perspective on the overall NAP process. The tool is implemented through one- or two-day workshops and ensures the participatory involvement of stakeholders. It helps to put into practice the NAP Technical Guidelines developed by the Least Developed Countries Expert Group (LEG) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Primarily involved in stocktaking, the tool helps to initiate a process that leads to the formulation, communication, implementation and monitoring of NAP.

The Urban Heat Island Mitigation Impact Screening Tool is a web-based software tool, developed to assist urban planners and air quality management officials in assessing the potential of urban heat island mitigation strategies to affect the urban climate, air quality, and energy consumption within their cities. The user of the tool can select from over 170 US cities for which to conduct the analysis, and can specify city-wide changes in surface reflectivity and/or vegetative cover.

The Value of Green Infrastructure report attempts to place an economic value on the benefits provided by green infrastructure (defined here as a network of decentralized storm water management practices). It brings together current research on green infrastructure performance and presents methods for calculating related benefits. It offers simple equations to quantify water, energy, air quality, climate change benefits for green roofs, tree planting, bioretention and infiltration, permeable pavement, and water harvesting. To estimate the monetary value of each of these quantified benefits, examples and, when possible, simple equations, are provided. The report also offers information and examples of benefits related to green infrastructure’s impact on the urban heat island effect, aspects of community liveability, habitat improvement, and public education.

The Vulnerability Sourcebook provides step-by-step guidelines for conducting vulnerability assessments and to monitor changes in vulnerability over time. Repeating vulnerability assessments on a regular basis is a rather new approach and serves as a valuable tool for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of adaptation by showing whether a reduction in vulnerability has really been achieved. The Vulnerability Sourcebook is structured along eight modules that provide detailed guidance on the operationalisation of a vulnerability assessment. A key element is the development of climate change impact chains. The approach of the Sourcebook is applicable from national to local level and to a broad range of sectors. It is illustrated with examples and lessons learned from pilot applications in Bolivia, Pakistan, Burundi and Mozambique.

The Theory and Practice of Climate Adaptation is a book prepared by participants to the “2nd World Symposium on Climate Change Adaptation” organised by the University of Coimbra (Portugal), the Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management” of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the Baltic University Programme in Uppsala (Sweden), in cooperation with the International Climate Change Information Programme (ICCIP) and the United Nations University initiative “Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development” (RCE). The symposium was a truly interdisciplinary event, covering some of the key areas in the field of climate change adaptation. The event focused on “integrative approaches to implement climate change adaptation” and was meant to contribute to the further development of this field. The is organised in five sections: Part I “Climate Change Governance and Policy”; Part II “Climate Change Adaptation, Resilience and Disaster Risk Management”; Part III “Social Perceptions and Socio-cultural Dimensions of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation”; Part IV “Food Security and Climate Change: Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change”; and Part V “Technological approaches to Climate Change Adaptation/Innovative Approaches towards Low Carbon Economics”.

The ‘Theory of Change’ manual provides background information on the characteristics of a theory of change and guides the reader through its application, with case study material. It provides a community level roadmap for change that can be applied for local/community level projects and programmes.

This TIPS guide on Building a Results Framework is a graphic representation of a strategy to achieve a specific objective that is grounded in cause-and-effect logic. The focus is on using results frameworks for USAID projects, however the concepts and approach are applicable across different organisations.

The Tool for Integrating Ecosystems into Climate Change Adaptation Planning refers to the national adaptaion planning (NAP) process, which offers a core planning framework and which can be supplemented with a range of existing and purpose-built guidance and tools. Sectoral supplements for the NAP are being prepared for agriculture, water and disaster management, but this tool is the first guide that supports consideration of ecosystems across all the relevant steps of the NAP process.

The Integrating Agriculture in National Adaptation Plans (NAP-Ag) Knowledge Tank aims to bring forward key tools and knowledge resources to stakeholders working in areas of climate change adaptation, resilience and disaster risk reduction in agriculture sectors (including forestry and fisheries). It is tailored, in particular, to support the formulation and implementation of NAPs and adaptation planning.

Toolkit 2: Developing a Climate Change Analysis describes a basic approach that follows a five-step process to develop a climate change analysis based on scientific and community/local knowledge. This approach takes advantage of both sources of knowledge to increase both the accuracy of the analysis and the community’s confidence in it as a basis for making decisions about their livelihoods that will increase resilience and their ability to cope with changing climate risks.

The Toolkit for Engaging the Private Sector in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) offers guidance for governments developing strategies for the effective engagement of private sector actors in the NAP process. The toolkit is designed to guide a NAP team through the development and implementation of a private sector engagement strategy so that private sector actors can act as stakeholders in the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation phases of the NAP process.

An interactive flexible Toolkit designed to facilitate the integration of climate change adaptation into development projects. It is organised around the following, simplified stages in the project cycle: analysis, design and implementation. Information and knowledge management, including monitoring and evaluation, is treated as an ongoing function which is integrated into each of these stages.

TOP-SECAC is intended as a decision support tool for development and research experts and policy-makers. It should also be considered as a complement to traditional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approaches, tools and methods used in results-based management. The toolkit involves 11 tools such as Vision-Actions-Partnerships, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)/Participatory Action Research (PAR), CRiSTAL and Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis (CVCA) that can be used at varies stages of the analysis, planning and M&E.