Nature and The Climate Crisis

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2021 marks the beginning of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and is a crucial year for global frameworks set through the CBD COP15 and UNFCCC COP26. In such a critical time, we cannot continue along the old lines. We must boldly imagine a new future, with new systems. To achieve this future, it is vital that we acknowledge the crucial role healthy ecosystems and biodiversity play alongside mechanisms for mitigation and adaptation, not only to address the crises facing biodiversity and the climate, but to achieve better, more equitable systems for people.

When ecosystems are degraded, poorly managed or lost, they contribute to both global ­warming and loss of wildlife. Healthy ecosystems are vitally important for our native wildlife, carbon storage and protecting people from the impacts of climate change. Nature can play a major role in helping to address climate change by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it in ecosystems. Essential natural carbon stores include forests, grasslands and peatlands, coastal wetlands such as saltmarshes, and marine habitats such as kelp forests and sea grasses. Protecting and restoring these areas will enable nature to absorb more carbon, whilst providing important habitats to help reverse the decline in nature. Nature can also help us to adapt to climate change, as healthy ecosystems underpin our natural support systems, like natural flood management and contribute to healthy people and communities.

However, these steps for nature, commonly labelled ‘nature-based solutions’, must be activated by people. The management, restoration and advocacy for nature when done well thus acts as a vehicle for socio-economic development. When the discussion loses sight of values like equity, nature based solutions can pose as many risks as benefits, including industry capture, greenwashing, land grabs and offsets.

This webinar is to explore both the vulnerability and potential of nature ecosystems, and highlight how people and communities are at the core of enacting change for nature and climate. What do we mean when we say ‘nature’s role in mitigation and adaptation’? Can we effectively outline safeguards, or principles, for nature based solutions that allow nature to be used as a tool for the climate? What are some examples of effective work in this field, and what are the standards and values by which we evaluate that effectiveness? How can people be at the heart of this work?