During Cyclone Dana, Odisha’s mangroves outperformed costly infrastructure in defense, highlighting that India’s vital coastal ecosystems remain largely underutilized and unrecognized in mainstream adaptation policy and finance.
About Ecosystem-Based Coastal Adaptation (EbA)
- Definition: Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) uses biodiversity and ecosystem services to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.
- Ecological Shields: India’s 11,000-kilometer coastline hosts diverse ecosystems—including mangroves, seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and wetlands—that act as natural shock absorbers against marine hazards.
- Global Hotspot: Research identifies India as a global hotspot for coastal EbA. Its mangroves are uniquely efficient, protecting more people per hectare than almost any other country.
- Socio-Economic Co-benefits: Unlike concrete structures, EbA strengthens local livelihoods. For example, in the Sundarbans, a community-led initiative by over 18,000 women restored 4,600 hectares of mangroves, which successfully blunted the impacts of cyclones Amphan and Yaas while generating income through honey collection and crab farming.
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Challenges in India’s Coastal Climate Adaptation Strategy
- Spending Imbalance: Public spending reveals a stark preference for engineered “grey” measures. Coastal states spent ₹2,641 crore on hard infrastructure over the last decade. In contrast, the National Coastal Mission’s budget was slashed from ₹195 crore (2022–23) to just ₹50 crore (2024–25).
- Displaced Risks: While grey infrastructure (e.g., seawalls, groynes, tetrapods, embankments) is necessary for high-density urban areas, it is expensive to maintain and often transfers risks. In Kerala, hard armoring protected specific sites but accelerated erosion and damage in adjacent, unprotected coastal areas.
- Conceptual Ambiguity: The national policy space is crowded with overlapping terms like Nature-based Solutions (NbS), Ecosystem-based Coastal Adaptation (EbCA), and Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR). This terminological clutter creates uncertainty about what officially qualifies as EbA.
- The Classification Disconnect: Major initiatives are often misclassified. The Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI) program aims to restore 540 square kilometers of mangroves across nine states to protect communities. However, it is primarily framed as a restoration initiative rather than a climate adaptation program.
Institutional and Reporting Challenges in Coastal Adaptation
- Peripheral Policy Status: Fragmented institutional mandates, weak monitoring systems, and a political preference for visible concrete infrastructure leave ecosystem-based interventions buried within broader sectoral programs.
- Hidden Adaptation Portfolio: Because ecosystem projects are implemented under generic development or conservation schemes, their adaptation benefits are rarely assessed or recorded separately. This makes India’s actual coastal EbA portfolio appear much weaker than it truly is.
- Reporting Risk: Without clear ways to identify and track these interventions, India risks undercounting its most effective climate responses. This is particularly critical as the Global Goal on Adaptation increases international focus on how adaptation outcomes are measured and reported.
Strengthening Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) Governance
- Cognisance: The State must formally acknowledge EbA not merely as an environmental or conservation tool, but as a core climate resilience and development strategy.
- Counting: India needs clear methodologies to track, isolate, and evaluate the specific adaptation and socio-economic outcomes of ecosystem interventions to ensure they are accurately reflected in national statistics.
- Classification: Creating a unified national policy framework that systematically defines and categorizes EbA projects to shift them out of generic sectoral categories and unlock direct climate finance.
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Conclusion
The challenge is no longer whether ecosystem-based adaptation works, but whether our policy frameworks are prepared to recognize, measure, and scale it. Moving from isolated, dispersed projects to a coherent national strategy will allow India to reposition its natural capital as its most resilient, cost-effective, and equitable line of defense against climate change.
5 Jun 2026
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