Financing Resilience: From Local Solutions to Systemic Change
Date: August 18, 2026 / News
What does it take to move Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) from promising projects to solutions that can be implemented at scale?
This was the central question at yesterday’s Global EbA Fund’s side event at UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, which brought together researchers, practitioners, women leaders and community representatives to explore how evidence, local knowledge, finance and partnerships can create the conditions for change at scale. The event was opened by Udo Weber from the German Embassy in Mongolia highlighting the importance of tackling land, climate and biodiversity challenges together, breaking the siloes at implementation level.
The message was clear: the challenge is no longer simply proving that EbA works. It is to help extend the reach and impact of EbA.
For the Global EbA Fund, this means using catalytic finance to move from evidence to policy, from innovation to investment, and from projects to systems. As Enni Kallio of IUCN highlighted, scaling is not simply about replicating individual projects, but about directing investment where it is most needed and ensuring it reaches the right stakeholders for the greatest impact. Julian Blanc from UNEP echoed this notion, urging that we need to disrupt the status quo on the barriers to EbA uptake, including financing.
From tree-planting targets to strategic restoration
Restoration goals are often measured in hectares, but numbers alone will not ensure equitable and sustainable benefits for ecosystems and communities. The UNU-EHS-implemented EbA4UNGOALS project in Togo, presented by Dr. Kossi Adjonou of Université de Lomé, illustrates why restoration needs to go beyond numerical targets. Effective restoration that delivers lasting environmental and livelihood benefits requires decisions about where to restore, which species to use, who benefits and which partners need to be involved, combining scientific evidence with local and traditional ecological knowledge. The lesson for scaling is that quality matters as much as quantity.
Building the evidence needed to scale
Nicole Harari of World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) / Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Bern stressed that successful scaling depends on having robust evidence. Standardised documentation can help turn individual experiences into comparable information that supports replication, investment and policy decisions. At the same time, evidence for scaling needs to reflect diverse experiences, knowledge, and perspectives.
The global project, implemented by CDE, WOCAT, Kaschak Institute and FAO’s WeCAN platform, is also applying a Gender-Responsive Sustainable Land Management tool to bring greater visibility to women-led solutions in drylands — recognising that sustainable land management practices can have different impacts depending on social norms, access to resources and decision-making power.
“Sustainable land management practices are not gender neutral”, she said. Gender-disaggregated data, also highlighted through UNCCD processes and the evaluation of the Gender Action Plan, is therefore critical.
For Dunia Baroud El Khoury of Women’s Association of Deir El Ahmar (WADA) and WeCaN, scaling also means ensuring that the people living with environmental and climate challenges have a meaningful role in shaping solutions — and in the decisions that affect them.
Her experience in Lebanon demonstrates how restoration can connect environmental action with women’s economic empowerment, agriculture, local products, protected areas and rural tourism. The Global EbA Fund-supported work has also helped create pathways for women’s participation beyond the local level, strengthening their capacity to participate in international processes.
“We are the bridge between this table here and the local community”, she stated.
Her journey from participating as a CSO observer at UNCCD COP15 to engaging as a negotiator at UNCCD COP17 illustrates the importance of ensuring that local actors have a voice in shaping how solutions are scaled and can influence decisions at the global level.
Scaling without losing local ownership
Tamara Mohr of Both ENDS brought the discussion to Bangladesh, where the People’s Plan for tidal river management project combines community and Indigenous knowledge with hydrological modelling and scientific evidence.
The project demonstrates that scaling locally led adaptation does not mean copying a single intervention from one place to another. Different river basins have different ecological dynamics and social contexts, and communities need to remain at the centre of decisions about what works where.
She also highlighted a fundamental financing challenge: while significant investment continues to flow towards conventional, top-down infrastructure, community-led ecosystem approaches can struggle to access the resources they need.
For solutions to scale effectively, the process should remain grounded in the local context and designed in partnership with the communities responsible for their long-term stewardship. “Invest in restoring the ecosystem and in communities that know how to manage it”, she appealed.
Alima Sagito from WeCaN and Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA) in Ghana highlighted another critical dimension of scaling: capacity only becomes transformative when people have opportunities to use it.
Training women in negotiation and advocacy is an important first step, but women also need platforms where they can influence decisions, share their knowledge and access resources. In Ghana, EbA approaches are being connected with women’s livelihoods and economic opportunities, demonstrating how climate resilience and economic empowerment can reinforce one another.
“When you train women, you give them the capacity, [but] you need to give them a platform to also showcase this capacity”, she emphasised.
From catalytic grants to bigger change
Across these diverse experiences, a common message emerged: effective EbA cannot be reduced to an environmental intervention alone.
The strongest approaches bring together science and data, Indigenous and local knowledge, community ownership, women’s meaningful participation, sound ecological choices and the right governance and financing conditions.
For the Global EbA Fund, this is precisely the purpose of catalytic finance: grants are not an end in themselves, but a means to enabling policy change, strengthening institutional capacity and partnerships, building evidence, and mobilising the investment needed to sustain and expand successful approaches.
“Our ambition is not that a Global EbA Fund grant be the end of the financing story. It should be the beginning of a much bigger one”, concluded Ali Raza Rizvi, IUCN Climate Change and Energy Transition Team Director.
Ultimately, scaling EbA is about changing the conditions around individual initiatives so that good ideas can influence policies, institutions, investment decisions and wider practice.
As the discussion underscored, scaling effectively requires an integrated approach to resilience, one that connects its social, economic, ecological and governance dimensions.
This is the shift needed to move from isolated good practices towards systemic transformation — while keeping people and ecosystems at the centre.
The Global EbA Fund will be announcing new funding opportunities during the ‘Ministerial Dialogue on Innovative Financial Mechanisms for Healthy Land and Drought Resilience’ in plenary at UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Finance Day this Monday, 24 August 2026.
