 My name is Dr Hannah Reid and I work on nature-based and ecosystem-based solutions to climate change with IID. We're here in Poland at the COP where ecosystem-based adaptation is very prominent, both in the negotiating schedule but also in the many side events that accompany the official negotiations. We're seeing people asking, well, we know adaptation is important but how do we do it? How do we implement adaptation? And this is where we come in as IID. We bridge the gap between research and policy and we're trying to provide some of those solutions about how to do good adaptation. And one of the answers to that big question is ecosystem-based adaptation. I've been working with the Natural Resources Group to do research on ecosystem-based adaptation. It's a prominent idea, it's very common in people's dialect. A lot of organisations are doing it but does it work? And we haven't had any good solid research on whether it works or not. This idea that is so popular and so fashionable almost but does it work? So as we search as we can try to answer that question objectively by looking at a number of ecosystem-based adaptation case studies from across the developing world and questioning whether it works or not. And to answer whether it works or not, we asked three broad questions. Does it work socially? Does it work for people? Does it actually help them adapt to climate change? The second question we asked was does it work economically? Is it a good place to put your money if you want to invest in climate change? Or would it be better to build a seawall or invest in some other kind of infrastructure? And then the third question we asked was does it work for ecosystems? Can ecosystems continue to provide those ecosystem services that humans need to adapt? And can the ecosystems themselves retain or improve their resilience in the face of stresses like climate change? So those are the three questions that we asked in our research on ecosystem-based adaptation and the results are coming through now. And the answer is yes, it works. Ecosystem-based adaptation works. It really helps people and it has an ability to help some of the poorest people and the most vulnerable people which is great because they're the ones who've caused climate change the least and really need help the most. The second question, does it work economically? In many instances it does, not in all instances, but in many instances it's a good place to invest your money. And then the third question, does it work for ecosystems? Yes it does, it increases their resilience and it helps them provide ecosystem services for people to continue to adapt to climate change. So the results of our research suggest that yes, EBA works but there are a number of caveats. There are trade-offs, there are costs and there are important things to do to get it right. Important policies need to be in place. Important enabling frameworks. Politicians who might not normally talk to each other have to work together. People in the finance departments, in agriculture, in water. These people aren't used to working together but for EBA to work they need to work together. It's a very multi-sectoral challenge. Whilst it works, it's hard to get right. It's hard to get all those enabling factors in place to make it work. Another important lesson is that participation is hugely important to make ecosystem-based adaptation effective. The involvement of local communities where they're in the driving seat of what activities are done and how they're implemented. This has been a key result from our research findings. The way that this research relates to activities of the COP is two-fold. First of all, we're here on a basic level to share the results of our research but it's more than that. The COP process involves questions about how do we do adaptation. So the Paris Agreement commits all countries that have signed up to it to implementing adaptation actions and part of that is through the INDCs. The INDC is a document that all countries that have signed up have to draw up and they have to list their commitments to adaptation as well as mitigation in this document. Now a lot of them have committed to nature-based solutions to adaptation. In fact, a very large number of developing countries and even more, a higher percentage of LDCs, least developed countries have committed to nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation. But there's no clear idea on how they necessarily do that. The INDCs don't include very many targets or clear goals on what EVA means. So our research feeds into the UNFCCC process on how to do adaptation, what is effective and how to measure success. So that's also one of the reasons why I'm here in Poland to try and share that knowledge and help people understand that if they want to meet their international commitments under the UNFCCC as well as meeting their national commitments to help their people adapt to climate change then ecosystem-based solution is a very good place to start.