Last week “NaturalClimate Solutions” announced a new initiative to address both climate breakdown and ecosystem
breakdown. This is a group with a broad spectrum of
support from Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) to George Monbiot
and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and with the sign-up of a large number of keyorganisations.
The message
is simple: restore our battered natural world on a huge scale - far greater
than the feeble efforts we’ve seen so far – and this will also draw carbon
dioxide out of the atmosphere and so help address climate change. All efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse
gasses remain vital, but our dismal failure to address climate breakdown means
that more is needed. Taking carbon
dioxide out of the atmosphere is now necessary – and nature is the only viable
way of achieving this.
In fact restoring
the natural world will give us a huge number of other benefits as well – flood
risk reduction, erosion control, pollution reduction, pollinating insects, soil,
food, water, oxygen, etc, etc. As well
as just making the world a whole lot better!
“Natural
Climate Solutions” calls for the large-scale restoration of lost forests
throughout the world, the rebuilding of degraded peatlands on a huge scale, restoration
of coastal habitats like salt marsh, mangrove forests, and seagrass beds (some
coastal habitats can lock up carbon 40 times faster even than forests). And so on.
Not just here and there, not just in nature reserves, but on a global
scale in all regions.
The climate
emergency is well known. But the
breakdown of our natural world is at least as worrying, yet far less recognised. Warnings of our predicament abound. Insect populations are falling off a cliff, vertebrate populations are down 60% in the last 30 years and extinction rates are about 1,000 times higher than they should be. More than merely a pity, this is the
breakdown of the life support systems on which we depend.
This is not
just the rantings of a few radical environmentalists. An independent international body (with the
enormous title of the “Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform onBiodiversity and Ecosystem Services”)
has conducted a 3 year UN-backed study culminating
in an 8,000 page report compiled by 500 experts in 50 countries which is
perhaps the greatest attempt yet to assess the state of life on earth
In my mind
there are two key messages coming out of this report.
First is the
basic fact that we are using nature at a rate that far exceeds its ability to
renew itself. As a result, our ability
to support the human population is being compromised in every region on earth. This is serious stuff – certainly as serious
as climate change.
Second –
this is the most important issue facing the human race and some of the best
scientific minds have produced a state of the art document to raise the
alarm. But I bet almost no one reading
this blog has heard about it!
As a species
we are obsessed with trivia rather than focus on the things that matter.
Ecosystem
breakdown and climate breakdown are, of course, linked. So it is refreshing to see the group “Natural
Climate Solutions” promoting this agenda.
It is not
new, however. We have been saying
similar things in the Wildlife Trust for many years. Our “Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex”,
published in 1997, promoted major restoration of ecosystems throughout Sussex. 20 years later our strategy “Nature andWellbeing in Sussex” made similar points and giving nature the space it needs to be part of all our
lives is the central call in our Wilder Sussex campaign .
Restoring
nature was urgent – 30 years ago. That
is why most developed nations signed the convention on biological diversity in 1992.
Since then progress has been dismal.
Virtually every (unambitious) target has been missed and we have entered
the earth’s 6th mass extinction.
More than merely “urgent”, restoring nature is now an emergency
integral with the climate emergency.
Maybe “Natural Climate solutions” will give us the impetus we need.
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