Biodiversity: A Climate for Change?
Until recently, when people talked about environmental issues, they generally referred to climate change and its impacts. There is now growing recognition of the implications surrounding biodiversity loss. At PlantingSeeds, we are passionate about educating about both issues and the ways they overlap. Importantly, enhancements of biodiversity can help reduce the urban heat island effect that impacts urban and peri-urban environments across Australia.
In recent years, governments and educational institutions have raised the agenda of both concerns, drawing attention to their overlapping impacts and concerns. The UN Convention on Biodiversity, the UN Framework on Climate Change, and the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework have all prioritised biodiversity conservation as a means of mitigating climate concerns.
An explainer
Ecosystems, land and molecular cycles are at the mercy of rising temperatures, sea levels, greenhouse emissions, and thus the behemoth of consequences that irreversible climate change brings. This points to the significance and importance of biodiversity conservation with nature enhancing elements that help to balance the growing “carbon budget”. The UN, in fact, emphasises that biodiversity is crucial to establishing and expanding the natural carbon-sinks necessary in an era where climate change alarm is an evolving reality.
Here are some of the insights concerning biodiversity and its use as a tool to mitigate climate change:
- Yale University professor, Oswald J Schmitz in his 2019 case study on “Enlisting Ecological Interactions among Animals to Balance the Carbon Budget.”, outlines that biodiversity conservation assisting predator-prey interactions among flora and fauna can enable a recapturing of carbon “within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems”, serving as an “untapped resource” in balancing half of “the carbon budget.” “Efforts to mitigate climate change have tended to focus on managing human activities like fossil-fuel burning and land clearing, and on innovating technologically, to reduce CO 2 emissions to the atmosphere”, but not enough on “actively” utilising “natural ecological processes,” he argues.
- A WWF article in 2024: “Why bees are climate heroes”, emphasises the importance of bee pollinators in contributing to carbon sequestration, soil health and the enrichment of natural carbon sinks, with this contribution to healthy soil supporting thriving ecosystems.
- A 2021 report published in the Journal of Applied Ecology: “Time to integrate global climate change and biodiversity science-policy agendas”, outlines how mitigating biodiversity loss is important, as the climate crisis “reduce(s) species abundance, local extinctions”. It states that the consequences of the rapid degradation and/or loss of ecosystems such as mangroves, tropical forests, peatlands and sea-grass “are having a major impact on our planet's ability to store carbon, while reducing nature's and people's ability to adapt to and/or cope with changing climatic conditions”. The authors advocate for greater efforts to conduct an integrated approach between the UN’s framework on climate change, and conventions on biodiversity.
The convergence and acknowledgement of climate change and global biodiversity efforts as symbiotic goals and projects have been accelerated to mainstream collaborations in the international community, through the UN Conventions on Biological Diversity in 2022 and 2024.
- The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity Biodiversity summit occurring in November 2024, recognised the work of Indigenous peoples and local communities to biodiversity conservation efforts, and integrated climate talks with discussion of state reports conducted in response to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement.
- The convention outlined that “119 countries, representing the majority of the 196 Parties to the CBD, submitted national biodiversity targets reflecting alignment with the KMGBF” where “44 countries submitted National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) – the policy documents that support the implementation of national targets”.
- This integration of climate change and biodiversity as joint goals was significantly established in the previous 15th meeting through the Kunming-Montreal framework, in December 2022, with Australia performing as one of 188 signatories to the four global 2050 goals and 23 global 2030 targets outlined. Australia’s acknowledgement and attempts to implement goals combining biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, are largely addressed through the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2024-2030, otherwise known as the Strategy for Nature 2024-2030. The policies ultimately aim to “Minimise the impact of climate change on biodiversity”, through various biodiversity conservation efforts.
Grassroots and top-level actions needed
PlantingSeeds promotes biodiversity and environmental sustainability in urban, peri-urban and regional environments in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, through our B&B highway program.
With climate change and biodiversity impacts growing concerns, both grassroots and top-level interventions need to work hand in hand.
By: Thushaaraa Madathil