UNEP is together with partners helping Georgia find nature-based solutions for boosting the resilience of its mountainous regions to climate change.

Together with GRID-Arendal, Sustainable Caucasus, Green Movement Georgia and others, UNEP met with local stakeholders from mountain municipalities in Georgia on 31 March to jointly identify key needs and challenges.

There, Georgian stakeholders developed concrete ideas for action to safeguard local tourism and related infrastructure development. The measures are in line with recommendations from the recently-published Outlook on Climate Change Adaptation in the South Caucasus Mountains produced by UNEP and partners, which calls for a stronger policy focus on adaptation and nature-based solutions.

Georgia’s mountain regions offer great prospects for tourism. Yet the regions are increasingly disposed to climate change-induced disasters such as floods, mudslides and avalanches. In 2011, for example, heavy rainfall resulted in floods and landslides causing severe damage to the country’s infrastructure - including that for water and food supply - affecting 3,000 households.

The underlying principle behind ecosystem-based adaptation is that healthy ecosystems can play a vital role in increasing resilience to climate change and in reducing climate-related risks and vulnerabilities. They can reduce disaster risk by acting as natural buffers or as protective barriers against floods and landslides.

Ecosystem-based adaptation has been successfully tested in other mountain regions such as Nepal, Uganda and Peru under the UNEP, IUCN, UNDP flagship project on Ecosystem-based Adaptation in Mountain Ecosystems coordinated by UNEP’s Climate Change Adaptation Unit.

For more details write to matthias.jurek@unep.org