In a single instance, an ostensibly sound coverage of planting timber on wetlands backfired when these carbon-rich landscapes dried up, releasing the planet-heating emissions saved of their roots and soil. Picture: Shutterstock
Some approaches to tackling international warming can have unintended knock-on penalties for nature and the safety of biodiversity, say scientists urging a extra coordinated effort on these challenges.
“Generally by looking for an answer to an issue, we danger creating harm elsewhere,” Anne Larigauderie on the Intergovernmental Scientific and Political Platform on Biodiversity (IPBES), an skilled impartial physique, advised AFP.
The IPBES will publish a report in December on how totally different crises—together with local weather change and biodiversity loss—are carefully associated and must be addressed collectively, not in isolation.
The IPBES and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) warned in 2021 {that a} siloed strategy risked “actions which, inadvertently, stop the decision of 1 or the opposite drawback, and even each.”
In Britain, for instance, an ostensibly sound coverage of planting timber on wetlands backfired when in flip these carbon-rich landscapes dried up, releasing the planet-heating emissions saved of their roots and soil.
Damaging results
Local weather Motion Community, a collective of non-government organisations, has warned in opposition to “false options” which promise a more healthy planet however with a price to folks or ecosystems connected.
Deliberately injecting iron into the oceans, for instance, to spice up microplankton development could seem promising however “geoengineering” methods have raised issues about potential repercussions.
Alison Smith, a researcher on the College of Oxford, mentioned iron fertilisation was “prone to trigger large environmental harm for unsure local weather acquire.”
“Measures taken to mitigate local weather change should be evaluated based on their general advantages and dangers and never solely based on their carbon footprint,” mentioned the Basis for Biodiversity Analysis in 2022.
Wind generators produce clear energy and scale back the dependence of vitality methods on fossil fuels, however can pose a danger to migratory birds or bats in some areas.
And constructing dams for hydroelectricity can block the passage of fish alongside waterways, decreasing their populations.
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Breaking down silos
“With crises as huge, advanced and interconnected as local weather change and biodiversity loss, specializing in one facet of the issue won’t ever be sufficient,” mentioned Tom Oliver on the College of Studying.
It’s “necessary to look past ‘sticking plaster fixes'” resembling geoengineering, he mentioned, which “can have big anticipated uncomfortable side effects.”
Putting in “underwater curtains” to guard glaciers in Antarctica from warming waters—an concept floated eventually yr’s UN local weather summit—might impede nutrient circulation, Lars Smedsrud, from the College of Bergen, wrote within the journal Nature this yr.
Within the quest for options to our greatest and most daunting challenges it’s “necessary to have a look at the large image — not simply focus narrowly on local weather change,” mentioned Smith.
She is certainly one of many consultants pushing for nature-based options which have “mixed advantages for biodiversity, the local weather and populations”.
A 2020 research within the journal World Change Biology concluded that “nature-based interventions have been most frequently proven to be as efficient or extra so than various interventions for addressing local weather impacts.”
And it’s in preserving present ecosystems, fairly than attempting to recreate new ones, that the potential is biggest.
A 2023 research in Nature discovered that merely defending present forests and leaving them alone to regenerate would ship appreciable carbon elimination advantages.
“There is no such thing as a one single silver bullet—we have to do all the things we will, throughout all sectors, nations and strategies,” mentioned Smith.
“Breaking down silos is the one method ahead that will not trigger extra issues than it solves.”
