Quantifying Global-Level Synergies and Trade-Offs between Biodiversity Conservation and Nature Based Climate Solutions

Quantifying Global-Level Synergies and Trade-Offs between Biodiversity Conservation and Nature Based Climate Solutions

While global policy increasingly recognises the value of terrestrial habitats for climate stabilisation, carbon-biodiversity relationships are complex. This project will inform intergovernmental negotiations by combining CCI and wider expertise to quantify the emissions-reduction potential of a biodiversity restoration actions, and the biodiversity consequences of contrasting nature-based climate solutions.

Project Aims

The overarching aim is to provide timely data on the respective carbon and biodiversity consequences of conservation and climate change mitigation intervention strategies under discussion at Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the CBD and UNFCCC and forthcoming meetings of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. In doing so we also aim to develop a wide network of collaborators to provide data-rich assessments of the biodiversity benefits and limitations of nature-based climate solutions.

Key Activities

  • Collate global datasets to enable estimate of biodiversity value metrics and carbon removal potential.
  • Quantifying the impact on carbon and biodiversity of restoration of pasture and abandoned land to meet three species recovery scenarios, using scenarios representing restoration of natural land covers to a range of years relative to 2015.
  • Quantifying the impact on carbon and biodiversity of restoration of pasture and abandoned land to meet three nature-based solution scenarios using a ‘forest retention and restoration scenario’, a ‘natural habitat scenario’ and a ‘climate change mitigation scenario’.
  • Make results available to CBD and UNFCCC negotiations through policy and advocacy

Conservation Impact

We hope that this project will contribute to:

  1. Greater and more explicit recognition in CBD and UNFCCC of the links between conventions, especially the impact of actions taken as part of one convention upon the other, and of how this relates to the development of post-2020 ambitions and work programmes.
  2. Increased coordination between and sharing of work programmes between the CBD and UNFCCC, centred in part on the scope for nature-based climate solutions to co-deliver biodiversity and climate change mitigation gains.
  3. Development of collaborations and networks to work across disciplines, across the research/policy interface, and with key partners.

Outputs

The code developed to calculate biodiversity metrics will be made available to enable researchers elsewhere to repeat our methods on other data sets.

The results of the analyses will be developed into policy briefs to feed into COPs in time for CBD working groups and UNFCCC Subsidiary meetings.

Two manuscripts will be produced for submission to peer-reviewed journals, one on the climate change mitigation potential of meeting restoration targets and on the biodiversity impacts of contrasting future scenarios for adopting nature-based climate solutions.

Project Overview

Type: Funded Projects
Theme: Biodiversity and climate change, Linking people, livelihoods and biodiversity, Policy and governance, Valuing biodiversity and ecosystem services
Project code: CCI-05-20-006
Start date: November 2, 2020
Status: Active

Project team

CCI partners Involved

Other Organisations Involved

               

 

The Conservation EE Lab

www.conservationee.org