Climate change is an issue that affects lives of millions of people across the world. Therefore, this study urges that the integration of climate risk considerations into policy should be increased, in order to ensure that development proceeds along pathways that are resilient to climate change. The paper shows that in particular ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) approaches have proved to provide flexible, cost-effective and broadly applicable alternatives for reducing the impacts of climate change and as such are a critical tool for adaptation planners to help them tackle climate change threats. This paper reviews the rapidly evolving concept of ecosystems-based approaches to climate change adaptation and its role in addressing multiple scale risks, vulnerabilities and opportunities. Fundamentally, EbA is the use of natural capital by people to adapt to climate change impacts, which can also have multiple co-benefits for mitigation, protection of livelihoods and poverty alleviation.