Tree planting projects help combat the climate crisis, but they can also affect water supplies
Costfoto/NurPhoto
The major environmental, social and economic crises facing the world today – biodiversity, climate change, health, food and water – are inextricably linked, and tackling them together has many benefits. Focusing on just one issue, however, can make other crises worse.
This is the conclusion of a major report compiled by 165 researchers from 57 countries over the last three years and approved by the governments of 147 countries.
UN conventions on issues such as biodiversity and climate address these issues individually. “So what we’re doing now in this report, which hasn’t been done before, is to bring all of that together and show that looking at these crises individually is not only ineffective, it’s a real risk,” he says. Paula Harrison at the Center for Ecology & Hydrology in the UK, where he led the evaluation process for the report. “Actions are urgent, but if we don’t take these interdependencies into account, it will cause new problems or make existing problems worse.”
Harrison says the scientific studies reviewed for the report provide strong evidence that many actions can be taken that have beneficial effects in all five areas simultaneously. These include conserving and restoring mangrove forests, promoting soil health and carbon content, creating early warning systems for all types of hazards, reducing the risk of disease spreading from animals to humans, universal health care and international cooperation in technologies related to these issues.
There are trade-offs: Actions with broad benefits are not the same as actions that are the best solution to a problem, he says.
“What you can’t do is get as much value as possible at the same time,” says Harrison. “You can’t optimize food production and not have a negative impact on everything else, but you can have a balanced approach that benefits everyone.”
Harrison gave an example of this planting trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If the focus is only on the climate, the trees chosen may be exotic species that do not support wildlife and take up too much water that affects the water supply. But if the projects took a more holistic approach, they would choose native tree species that use less water and promote biodiversity. “They may not sequester as much carbon, but they will add a lot of value to other aspects of the system,” says Harrison.
There are also economic benefits to an integrated approach helps preserve biodiversity as well as achieving other goals. Nexus reportas it is officially known, it says that more than half of the gross domestic product – 50 trillion dollars – is moderately or very dependent on nature.
“The unaccounted costs of current approaches to economic activity—reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health, and climate change, including food production—are at least $10 to $25 trillion per year.” Pamela McElwee of Rutgers University in New Jersey, the other co-chair, said in a statement.
“There is now a lot of evidence that if we continue as we are, there are very strong and growing biophysical risks to economic prosperity and financial stability,” says Harrison.
He did the Nexus report Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)Which is an organization that is not the United Nations, but works like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report was officially approved on December 16 by the representatives of the 147 member states of IPBES, gathered in Namibia.
The report is ambitious, he says Anne LarigauderieExecutive Secretary of IPBES. The goal is to provide the science and evidence needed to help achieve other international treaties, he said, including the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
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