The climate emergency necessitates a massive shift in civilization to cut emissions from energy, transportation, manufacturing, construction, and land use, with the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. However, while industrial emission reductions are vital, they will not be adequate to keep global temperature rises well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, which is the goal set forth in the Paris Agreement and necessary to avert catastrophic global impacts.
This lofty target will necessitate worldwide commitments to both an energy transition and increased investment in the protection, restoration, and management of forests, farms, and wetlands, all of which naturally take carbon from the atmosphere.
In the news recently, there has been a lot of discussion about using new technical advancements to trap carbon emissions and reduce global warming. What do such breakthroughs entail in terms of combating climate change?
Solving the climate change problem is entirely possible, but it will not be simple, and it will necessitate a combination of creativity and communal action. This recent emphasis on technical invention is fantastic, but it's also vital to remember that innovation happens in the non-human world. Long before people, the earth devised an amazingly ingenious solution to the same problem we confront today: an excess of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Photosynthesis is the solution that evolution "developed" about 3 billion years ago. Nature has perfected photosynthesis since then, and it is now employed to manage the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This natural climate solution also happens to be fairly good at giving other benefits like clean water, clean air, biodiversity, healthy soil, and increased human well-being, not to mention a more interesting planet to live on.
In conclusion, we urgently require both technical and natural climate solutions. Both have a role to play in addressing the climate emergency, and we need both. Most people understand this, but sadly, some have devolved into a pointless either/or debate.
How much can nature contribute to fighting climate change? The answer was simple: 11 gigatons of avoided emissions per year, or about one third of what we need to do in the next ten years to avoid a planetary catastrophe caused by unchecked warming.
But we’re still learning about how we can best deploy specific strategies. There’s been a lot of attention on tree planting recently—which is great!—but tree planting is only one of many available natural climate solutions. We need all of them, and we need to use the right ones at the right time in the right place. In other words, TNC scientists are now trying to answer the more difficult question: not just how much nature can contribute, but how we actively work with nature to get to the 11 gigatons we need.
Our initial 2017 analysis stressed the importance of forest protection and better management of existing forests, which have the potential to offer one-third of the total 11 gigatons of emissions reductions that nature can give. We're currently looking into the enabling factors that help safeguard forests from conversion and improve their management, such as strengthened community tenure and low-carbon timber incentive programmes.
Similarly, new study from our group suggests that merely allowing forests to recover on their own can add another quarter of the 11 gigatons. (The remaining 40% of nature's potential is accounted for by other natural climate solutions, such as regenerative agriculture and mangrove restoration.)
Tree planting may be useful in some situations when human disturbance has prohibited trees from replacing themselves (for example, abandoned agricultural grounds far from seed sources), but trees have evolved many inventive strategies to plant and regenerate themselves. After all, nature's research and development programme is 350 million years ahead of ours!
That is an excellent question. I'm glad to say that I work with a lot of clever people who are assisting me in determining the best strategy to get the science to the relevant decision-makers and land stewards. For example, my colleagues in Indonesia and Gabon are using our research to directly assist government policymakers with answering crucial questions such as whether NCS are appropriate for their nation, how to implement them, and where to do so. The answers are being included directly into the climate mitigation programmes of Indonesia and Gabon.
My colleagues in corporate engagement, for example, are assisting large corporations such as Microsoft and Amazon in learning how to employ natural climate solutions to decrease and offset emissions in their own supply chains. TNC has formed Nature4Climate, a coalition of prominent conservation, international, and commercial groups dedicated to fostering collaboration between governments, civil society, businesses, and investors.
More of this type of work is needed: bringing natural and technical advances to the forefront to assist investors, practitioners, and decision-makers in identifying the what, where, when, and how of working with nature—together—to confront civilization's greatest issue. The point is that it would be absurd — and rather arrogant — to believe that we humans could do it without the help of nature. We must approach the situation with the appropriate level of humility and respect for nature's immense strength, and we must enlist all of nature's tremendous inventiveness in the task at hand.
