Nature is a powerful tool in the fight against threats like climate change and biodiversity loss, but more must be done to fully utilize its potential – and we need to act quickly.
Not only are trees, plants and healthy soil an abundant and cost-effective means of removing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they are also home to insects, birds, animals and a world of microscopic organisms that help to underpin human life.
Sustainable agriculture and forestry solutions that harness the power of nature can help protect, preserve and restore natural ecosystems and address some of society’s challenges.
But investment to scale up these initiatives needs to increase many times over to help meet climate targets.
Repair, restore and regenerate
So, what are nature-based solutions?
The term refers to actions and policies that use nature’s resources to protect and restore ecosystems, while helping resolve society’s challenges.
It’s an approach to agriculture, forestry and land management that treats nature as a planetary life-support system, preserving woodlands, peat and grasslands, aquatic systems and working lands used to grow crops or rear livestock.
Nature-based solutions aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote healthy ecosystems and reduce the likelihood of flooding, soil erosion, drought and other extremes of the climate crisis.
“A fast overhaul of the entire food and agriculture systems is needed to shift market dynamics from driving soil and forest degradation towards starting to repair, restore and regenerate nature and communities,” says Rainforest Alliance CEO Santiago Gowland.
Gowland points to solutions such as regenerative farming – which improves rather than depletes natural resources like soil – and sustainable forestry, where timber is harvested without devastating large areas of tree canopy.
Other examples include Scotland’s plan to plant shade-giving trees along the banks of remote rivers to help cool the waters where salmon spawn – waters that are becoming inhospitably hot due to climate change.
Preserving ecosystems
Deforestation alone has removed 1.5 billion hectares of forest in the past 300 years or so – an area roughly one and a half times the size of the US.
Deforestation reached its peak in the 1980s, with records showing a 150 million hectare net loss during that decade as vast tracts of the Brazilian Amazon were cleared to graze livestock. This compares to canopy loss of 19 million hectares each decade between 1700 and 1850.
Rates have fallen since the 1980s, and some regions have begun to regrow more forests than they lose – as shown in green on the chart above.
Financing a nature-based future
Preventing deforestation and other unsustainable farming and forestry practices requires investment in environmentally focused solutions – and lots of it.
Funding from the G20 – consisting of the EU and 19 of the world’s largest economies – accounts for 92% of global investments in nature-based solutions, but is mostly spent on domestic initiatives.
The group invests $120 billion each year on nature-based solutions, assets and activities, but this needs to more than double to $285 billion by 2050 to avert a nature, climate and land degradation crisis, according to the State of Finance for Nature in the G20 report, released in January 2022.
This joint analysis by the UN Environment Programme, the World Economic Forum and the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative looks at how wealthy nations can promote sustainable farming and supply chains, and increase protection for oceans, forests and other natural spaces to limit global warming.
“The amount of money being invested in nature-based solutions is not nearly enough,” the report’s co-author Ivo Mulder told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I would hope that G20 countries can lead by example and they’re not doing that at the moment.”
The report’s authors call on governments and private investors in G20 countries to substantially increase their international investments in initiatives that put nature at the heart of efforts to build back better after the pandemic. Climate and nature-related financial risks should also be fully disclosed by companies and financial institutions, they say.
This article was first published by the World Economic Forum.
At this moment, it’s critical for businesses to embrace nature-based solutions alongside technological ones, to ensure a credible and impactful path to net-zero, says Maria Mendiluce, CEO, We Mean Business Coalition.
Preserving nature is a key element in the world’s effort both to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and it also happens to be good for business. But new findings show that much of the private sector continues to lag far behind in tackling deforestation and protecting biodiversity.
At a London Climate Action Week event on 29 June, hosted by the UN Climate Change High-Level Champions, speakers highlighted the need and opportunities for private sector breakthroughs, the action delivered to date and the tools required to reach a net zero, nature positive future.
Natural climate solutions are the key for the Race to Zero and the Race to Resilience. They can take us beyond net zero, to actually achieve drawdown. With all of the cascading benefits to people and the planet, it is clear that climate finance should support nature-based climate solutions, says Mamta Mehra, Senior Fellow, Land Use & Research Program Officer & Chad Frischmann, Senior Director, Drawdown Solutions, Project Drawdown
