Projects on Natural Capital
Nature and biodiversity build the foundation for human life and supply economy and society with a variety of ecosystem services. Many of these services are also of great importance for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Some climate change mitigation and energy policy instruments can have negative impacts on nature and ecosystem services, e.g. by promoting the cultivation of energy crops or unfavorable choices of location for wind farms, hydropower plants, and power lines. The cultivation of energy crops reinforces the current trend towards more intensive agriculture, conversion of grassland into cropland, and drainage of peatlands. This increases greenhouse gas emissions, has adverse effects on biological diversity, and contributes to the loss of numerous ecosystem services. By identifying, measuring and undertaking an economic valuation of climate-relevant (and other) services of nature, synergies and potential conflicts between climate policy and nature conservation can be analyzed more accurately.
The Project “Strategic mainstreaming of ecosystem-based adaptation in Viet Nam”
Ecosystem-based approaches make use of nature’s services for climate change mitigation and adaptation. They offer opportunities for climate policies which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build the adaptive capacities of land-use systems to climate change, and conserve and promote biological diversity and the ecosystem services provided by the various physiographic regions. They thus have the potential to significantly increase our ecosystems’ resilience to climate change.
The project “Strategic Mainstreaming of Ecosystem based Adaptation (EbA) in Viet Nam” is supported by the GIZ and has the objective of developing innovative and effective methods, strategies and policy guidelines for ecosystem-based adaptation related to land-use and development planning. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary vulnerability assessment to climate change in the two pilot provinces of Ha Tinh and Quang Binh, EbA measures are derived and integrated into manifold local planning activities (e.g. land-use, water resources, forestry, etc.).
The provinces of Ha Tinh and Quang Binh
Natural capital activities in Viet Nam
Natural capital is considered as one of key research areas of the Institute of Strategy and Policy of Natural Resource and Environment (ISPONRE) in Viet Nam. As part of its work, ISPONRE has been implementing a range of national and international projects/programmes related to natural capital, including: