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Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

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Project • CRRP2022-04MY-Ho

Safeguarding regional food security under climate change impacts via mainstreaming nature-based solutions-centred adaptation strategies (NAFOS)

The Lower Mekong River Basin (LMRB) contributes significantly to ensuring that Asia can stay food secure, yet, millions of its inhabitants struggle to meet their dietary needs. Climate change (CC) renders the LMRB even more food insecure via disrupted hydro-ecological regimes, intensified salinity intrusion, and deteriorated biodiversity, albeit many structural and non-structural countermeasures have been implemented. This project seeks new opportunities from Nature-based Solutions (NBS) that actively harness ecosystem services (ES) to address CC challenges effectively and adaptively. The proposed project targets the mainstreamed adaptation strategies for CC that are NBS-infused to safeguard LMRB food security via the realization of 4 objectives: (i) to evaluate the CC impacts on ES that render the basin food insecure; (ii) to curate NBS best practices in agriculture management; (iii) to examine the NBS potentials in enhancing LMRB’s CC resilience and food security; and (iv) to disseminate research findings and contribute to building stakeholders’ capacities to adopt and upscale NBS practices. Despite being among the fastest-growing sustainability-related topics, NBS remains under-represented in agriculture and food security discourses, hence the verified novelty of the proposed project. The LMRB is transboundary, the project thus can create new multinational partnerships while strengthening the existing ones between involved universities, NGOs, and governments.