Paper short abstract:

Ecosystems based adaptation (EbA) promises much but appears to have learned little from previous experience. Field research from Mexico, guided by a political ecology approach, flag the trade-offs which the EbA approaches need to, but as yet do not, address fundamentally.

Paper long abstract:

Using biodiversity and/or ecosystems to help people adapt to climate change (Ecosystems-based adaptation, or EBA) has, in recent years, received significant attention, having been championed by a range of international conservation and development actors. One of the more prominent framings of EBA emphasises its potential to bring about win-win-win-win outcomes. As such, this framing attempts to imbue EBA with the same kind of intuitive appeal held by a related, predecessor term, namely, sustainable development.

However, it is perhaps precisely the terms that claim to hold such intuitive appeal which require the most scrutiny. Whilst hypothetical benefits are overrepresented in the literature on EBA, there is little coverage of the costs and, crucially, the trade-offs that can be entailed. This paper will present the results of fieldwork from 3 fieldsites in the states of San Luís Potosí and Querétaro, Mexico, which explore ecosystems-based adaptation in the context of protected areas. Our results suggest that whilst EBA-relevant interventions delivered significant benefits in contexts when applied at a very small scale (less than 200 people), trade-offs were evident in fieldsites which were more populous. The risk with more prominent EBA framings, therefore, is that they a) overlook the (often painful) lessons of integrated conservation and development projects; and b) can obscure more effective or locally desired adaptation measures. Finally, we suggest that what is still missing in the ecosystems-based adaptation literature is a sense of the implications for its objectives of a globally predominant neoliberal political economy.