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Default Our Response to Climate Change Is Missing Something Big, Scientists Say

Our Response to Climate Change Is Missing Something Big, Scientists Say
By Catrin Einhorn, 6/10/21, New York Times

Some environmental solutions are win-win, helping to rein
in global warming & protecting biodiversity, too. But others
address one crisis at the expense of the other. Growing trees
on grasslands, for example, can destroy the plant & animal
life of a rich ecosystem, even if the new trees ultimately
suck up carbon.

What to do?
=============
Unless the world stops treating climate change & biodiversity
collapse as separate issues, neither problem can be addressed
effectively, acc. to a report issued Thurs by researchers
from two leading int'l scientific panels.

€śThese two topics are more deeply intertwined than originally
thought,€ť said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chairman of the scientific
steering committee that produced the report. They are also
inextricably tied to human well being. But global policies
usually target one or the other, leading to unintended
consequences.

€śIf you look at just one single angle, you miss a lot of
things,€ť said Yunne-Jai Shin, a marine biologist with the
French National Research Inst. for Sustainable Development
& a co-author of the report. €śEvery action counts.€ť

How we got here
===============
For years, one set of scientists & policymakers has studied
& tried to tackle the climate crisis, warning the world of
the dangers from greenhouse gases that have been building
up in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. The
lead culprit: burning fossil fuels.

Another group has studied & tried to tackle the biodiversity
crisis, raising alarms about extinctions & ecosystem collapse.
The lead culprits: habitat loss because of agriculture, &,
at sea, overfishing.

The two groups have operated largely in their own silos.
But their subjects are connected by something elemental,
literally: carbon itself.

The same element that makes up heat-trapping carbon dioxide,
methane & soot is also a fundamental building block of the
natural world. It helps form the very tissue of plants &
animals on earth. Its stored in forests, wetlands, grasslands
& on the ocean floor. In fact, land & water ecosystems are
already stashing away half of human-generated emissions.

Another connection between climate & biodiversity: People
have created emergencies on both fronts by using the
planets resources in unsustainable ways.

For the last couple of decades, the climate crisis has
largely overshadowed the biodiversity crisis, perhaps
because its threat seemed more dire. But the balance may be
shifting. Scientists warn that declines in biodiversity can
lead to ecosystem collapse, threatening humanitys food &
water supply.

€śClimate change of 4-5 degrees is just such an existential
threat to people, its hard to imagine,€ť said Paul Leadley,
one of the authors & an ecologist at Paris-Saclay Univ.

And, he continued, €śif we lose a really large fraction of
species on earth, thats an existential threat.€ť

Whats not working
===================
Businesses & countries have increasingly looked to nature
as a way to offset their emissions, for example, by planting
trees to absorb carbon. But the science is clear: Nature
cant store enough carbon to let us keep on spewing
greenhouse gases at our current rates.

€śA clear first priority is emissions reductions, emissions
reductions & emissions reductions,€ť Dr. Pörtner said.

Just last month, the worlds leading energy agency declared
that if the world wants to avoid the worst impacts of global
warming, nations would need to stop approving new coal, oil
& gas projects immediately.

To make matters worse, some measures being used or proposed
to address climate change could devastate biodiversity.

€śSome people are out there selling this message that if we
cover the whole planet with trees, that will solve the
climate problem,€ť Dr. Leadley said. €śThats a mistaken
message on many levels.€ť

In Brazil, parts of the Cerrado, a biodiverse savanna that
stores large amounts of carbon, have been planted with
monocultures of eucalyptus & pine in an attempt to meet a
global reforestation goal. The result, researchers have
written separately, is an €śimpending ecological disaster€ť
because they destroy the native ecosystem & the livelihoods
of local communities, including Indigenous people.

Europe once hoped to lead the world in biofuels until
realizing they led to deforestation & increased food prices.
Another kind of bioenergy, wood pellets, is currently booming
in the southeastern US, despite concerns about pollution &
biodiversity loss.

Climate interventions tend to hurt biodiversity more than
the other way round, & some trade-offs must occur, the
authors wrote. Solar farms, for example, eat up wildlife
habitat, a particular concern for places with threatened
species. But, critically, they generate clean energy.

The report highlights ways to mitigate the damage to
biodiversity, for example by grazing livestock around them,
improving carbon soil stocks & avoiding intact habitat.
Pollinator gardens on solar farms can help nurture insects
& birds. While wind farms can hurt migrating birds, the
authors note that modern turbines cause much less damage.

The solutions
-============
By protecting & restoring nature, the report said, we can
safeguard biodiversity, help limit warming, improve human
well being & even find protection from the consequences of
climate change, like intensified flooding & storms.

In the Casamance region of Senegal, for example, local
communities restored mangroves & adopted sustainable fishing
measures, improving their catch, bringing back dolphins &
20 species of fish, storing carbon & protecting their
coastline, said Pamela McElwee, an enviro anthropologist at
Rutgers who was one of the authors.

€śMangroves are a really special type of ecosystem,€ť she
said, €śin that they do it all for humans.€ť

While mangroves are themselves vulnerable to climate change,
Dr. McElwee said they appear less threatened than once
thought, because restoration efforts are working.

In the Hindu Kush mtns of S Asia, a project has conserved
an area about the size of Belgium, restoring high-altitude
forests & rangelands & protecting threatened snow leopards
& musk deer, the report says, while keeping carbon out of
the atmosphere. The 1.3 million people who live there,
straddling Nepal, India & the Tibet Region of China, have
seen enhanced household incomes thru tourism & sustainable
farming.

Urban areas, too, can do their part with native trees,
green spaces & coastal ecosystems, the researchers said.

The report was the first collaboration between the
Intergovt Panel on Climate Change & the Intergovt
Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services.

John P. Holdren, an enviro scientist at Harvard & a former
White House science adviser who was not involved in the
report, called it €śa must-read for our time.€ť

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/c...te-change.html