A clean energy transition is being carried out to stop the planet heat emissions, with investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency that exceed $ 1.4 billion this year.
The change – unevenly distributed thought in all countries – indicates real progress. But there is another solution that receives much less attention, not to mention financing: nature. We cannot stop a climatic crisis without it.
Even if the world cuts fossil fuel emissions immediately, humanity would feel a disastrous climate scenario if we also do not revert the destruction of forests, bosks and ecosystems deeons that are powerful carbon sponges.
Today, Conservation International and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published the exponential roadmap for natural climatic solutions, the first plan to maximize the role of nature in the approach to global warming. It finds that to avoid catastrophic climate change, the land sector, including agriculture and forestry, must only reach zero emissions by 2030, and sacrifices the orientation to get there.
“Climate change is one of the greatest threats that humanity has faced, and nature could be our greatest ally,” said Bronson Griscom, who directs the science of Conservation International on natural solutions. “Take the most of the potential of nature to avoid a climatic crisis is really reduced to three things: protect, manage and restore Earth’s ecosystems.”
To understand how nature can help avoid the rupture of the weather and what humanity should do the news of the next conservation, spoke with Griscom and other international conservation scientists Michael Wolosin and Starry Sprenkle-Hypolite, all of which contributed to the road map.
1. Protect
Approximately 15 percent of the lands of the Earth are protected, either as national parks, community conservation, indigenous land designations or other types of conservation methods.
That is a good beginning, but the most immediate way to amplify natural climatic solutions is to expand protections in regions that have vast climate carbon stores, such as mangroves, marshes and old forests and have a high risk of degradation, according to the new road map.
Strategies to protect these high carbon ecosystems include establishing a network of new national and regional protected areas, creating local and community parks and improving the management of existing protected areas through the development of climate resilience plans.
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Countries must advance in commercial laws to stop illegal deforestation and prohibit products produced in illegally deforested lands. But protecting forests is not just the work of governments.
“Companies, particularly in the agricultural sector, must reduce or eliminate deforestation in their supply chains,” said Michael Wolosin, principal researcher in the road map. “That means acting on non -defense commitments by informing deforestation and integrating objectives without deforestation into their purchase and trade decisions.”
Fortunately, many companies are beginning to realize that protecting nature is a good business. Last year, more than 30 financial institutions promised to eliminate the deforestation driven by the agriculture of their portfolios and increase investments in nature -based solutions by 2025. International conservation and other partners such as these fine ones such as these invertels as invested in the inverted inwars inwars in Wars Inwars Inwars Inwarsion Inwarsions. In their supply chains.
“With billions of assets, financial institutions can direct capital towards the incentives that protect, instead of destroying, nature,” said Wolosin. “They are critical to change the way in which Earth’s ecosystems are valued.”
2. Manage
Every year, large strips of tropical forests are destroyed to leave space for palm oil, cattle, soybeans and other products. Agricultural expansion is the largest deforestation engine. When fertilizer emissions and farm animals are taken into account, food systems emit more than a quarter of all greenhouse gases of human activity.
“Changing the foods we eat and how we grow is essential to limit global warming,” said Sprenkle-Hypolite. “And everyone can play a role, from farmers to manufacturers and consumers.”
The main culprit of food fed emissions is meat. Worldwide, approximately one third of cultivation lands is used to grow food for animals instead of people. Grazing cattle, for example, requires large extensions of land, which feeds deforestation. In addition, cattle in itself produce large amounts of methane, which is 80 times more powerful to heating than carbon dioxide in a period of 20 years.
To help address these problems, the report recommends a variety of “intelligent climate” techniques, which include adding trees along the edges of farmland and pastures to provide carbon storage benefits, practice rotational grazing to minimize soil erosion and planting pastures with legumes to improve soil fertility and carbon absorption.
These practices are already seeing promising results in Africa, where the Hering 4 Conservation International Hering 4 is helping farmers from six countries, and more than 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of Rangeland, implement intelligent climatic agricultural techniques to restore the nature on which they depend.
Through the program, rural communities minimize excessive grazing and eliminate invasive vegetation that hinder the growth of grass and water availability. In return, they receive support to improve the health of their livestock and access livestock markets. Critically, the project prioritizes the needs of farmers who depend on the nature that can lose the most if the grasslands continue to deteriorate.
“These solutions do not depend on hypothetical technologies,” said Sprenkle-Hyppolite. “In most cases, it is about implementing centenary practices, many of which incorporate indigenous knowledge to improve growth conditions, soil fertility and resilience to waves and heat drought.”
Other agricultural improvements described in the road map include coverage and reduced tillage cultivation, which regulates moisture and soil temperature, limits nutrient runoff and improves soil fertility, while reducing the carbon footprint of a farm.
3. Restore
Restoration of relegated ecosystems could eliminate 400 gigatones from co2 – Equivalent to emissions released by more than 86 million cars every year – by 2100.
“Stop deforestation is fundamental, but it will not be enough, we must also restore relegated lands and rebuild damaged ecosystems so that we can re -make their carbon failure benefits in the coming decades,” said Griscom.
Conservation International works with governments to develop policies that prioritize assisted natural regeneration, which is the most profitable restoration method to mitigate climate change. This approach allows trees to grow again by eliminating the barriers and threats of human activity.
“It is a relatively low cost of restoration approach that can be climbed rapidly through the protection of areas where forests are regenerating,” Griscom said.
Together with farmers, some of the most effective partners to restore nature are those that depend on it: indigenous peoples.
Indigenous, for example, in the Amazon jungle of Brazil, the indigenous peoples of the Xingu region are restoring their forests by implementing a traditional agricultural technique called Muvuca. This implies sowing a large and varied mixture of seeds that produce native plants, such as anacardos and Açaí, while restoring the ground.
With the support of Conservation International, the Xingu peoples helped plants seeds to produce more than 1.8 million trees, with a variety of positive impacts, from better water quality to greater agricultural production.
“Protection is still a priority, but it must be paired with other strategies,” Griscom said. “For people in industrialized countries, that means healthier diets. For farmers and forestry that means adopting smarter practices, with better financial support. And for indigenous peoples, it means justice, more rights and resources. All these efforts have one thing in common: prepare for a warmer planet when transforming our relationship with nature.”
Karey Price is a former writer and news editor at Conservation International. Why read more stories like this? Register to get updates by email here. Done to Conservation International here.
