Climate science and biodiversity are linked and the latest 2022 IPCC review of climate science spells out how we need to integrate policies to protect and restore nature. As stated by The Guardian, it is ‘potentially the last warning before the world is set irrevocably on a path to climate breakdown’.
With our focus on biodiversity, we present the report’s comments on how ‘society can ensure conservation of biodiversity in climate policies’. Some takeaway points:
- Climate policies should integrate with policies to protect and restore nature. Avoiding further loss of biodiversity is implicit in sustainable development. This needs to happen on land, rivers, lakes and in the oceans. It is especially important in “biodiversity hotspots” and 41 protected areas.
- Calls by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and scientific community to increase the size and connectivity of fully protected areas (which aim to have biodiversity in a near natural condition) and include in them the biodiversity hotspots, need to be immediately implemented.
- Healthy ecosystems play a role in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, not only protecting areas to prevent the release of carbon through land conversion activities but also restoring otherwise degraded land.
- The United Nations has declared 2021- 2030 as the Decade of Restoration, and the Decade of the Oceans. Restoration means actively or passively allowing habitat to return to its natural state (e.g., grassland, forest, peatland, 52 oyster beds), including replanting native vegetation.
- This can benefit the recovery of biodiversity, help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and improve the delivery of nature’s contributions to people such as climate regulation, water purification, pollination and pest and disease control.
- On land, the loss of natural forests and grasslands not only means a loss of carbon and many of their associated species, but exposes soils to erosion, affecting food production, and can affect the climate by altering the water-cycle.
- Biodiversity includes not only wild species but also the genetic diversity, including crops and wild crop relatives. These wild relatives may contain important genes that could help farmed crops survive better in a changed climate. At least some of these wild relatives come from areas designated as hotspots.
For more information on the B&B Highway, our answer to supporting biodiversity, click here.
For a further breakdown on the full IPCC report, click here.