Biodiversity Climate Action

Biodiversity is a safety net for the Earth’s climate regulation. Biodiversity loss and climate change are strongly reinforcing, together they speed each other up. Restoring nature and biodiversity is one of the best things we can do for climate action.

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Biodiversity and climate change are fundamentally linked

All Life on Earth – biodiversity – depends on a conducive climate. Climate change is already dramatically reducing the Earth’s ecosystem functioning and biodiversity. This reduces the ability of ecosystems to regulate temperature, manage water, and store carbon in on land and sea – thereby worsening climate change and its effects.

Biodiversity loss and climate change also have the same underpinning root causes. Both are driven by unsustainable human practices: over-consumption, over-production, over-extraction, over-exploitation. Biodiversity loss and climate change are much more effectively addressed together. Evidence shows that tackling these two crises separately is – at best – less effective; and at worst can have negative impacts on the other.

For example, poorly designed carbon capture afforestation schemes are well known to cause local biodiversity loss, because monoculture plantations disrupt local ecosystems. On the other hand, when biodiversity and climate actions are pursued together, climate, biodiversity, and local communities can all benefit.

Biodiversity is essential for climate change adaptation

Biodiversity protects and enhances the natural capacity of ecosystems to adapt under pressure. Higher genetic-, species- and ecosystem-level diversities builds ecosystem resilience and supports the delivery of ecosystem services.

Biodiverse landscapes are shared environments in which managed and semi-natural ecosystems can co-exist. These landscapes provide multi-functional benefits for thriving rural livelihoods and sustained resource-based economies. Biodiverse landscapes are considered critical to achieve an ecological transition towards more sustainable future.

Biodiversity is not just a concern of the countryside or of wild areas. Nature and biodiversity in cities are critical for regulating temperatures, supplying clean water, and providing recreational areas for relaxation and mental wellbeing. Technological advances may reduce our direct dependence on nature and biodiversity, but ultimately biodiversity is not something that can be replaced.

Nature inclusive planning at landscape scale brings nature back into everyday lives and provides multiple benefits and ecosystem services to people. Source: natuurinclusievelandbouw.nl
Nature inclusive planning at landscape scale brings nature back into everyday lives and provides multiple benefits and ecosystem services to people. Source: natuurinclusievelandbouw.nl

The promise of nature-based solutions for biodiversity and climate

Nature-based solutions protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems to address societal challenges such as climate mitigation and food security. Nature-based solutions deliberately use the power of natural processes and healthy ecosystems to achieve traditional engineering aims but with simultaneous co-benefits to people and nature.

Critically, nature-based solutions should never be a distraction from reducing emissions related to fossil fuel use. Instead, nature-based solutions are opportunities to weave together scientific, traditional and local knowledge to drive innovation and accelerate the change to sustainable and equitable futures. Nature-based solutions should always be implemented with the full engagement and consent of local communities, be responsive to their needs, and respect cultural and ecological rights.

Scaling up nature-based solutions for biodiversity and climate

Our research addresses how to put nature-based solutions on an equal footing with more traditional solutions by developing future visions , capturing and quantifying diffuse benefits, understanding risks, and designing novel governance structures for innovative developments. Our work shows that nature-based solutions are promising but are not yet common practice. Scaling up of nature-based solutions is urgently needed to be effective at addressing the global challenges of biodiversity and climate, and this begins with acknowledging their benefits and feasibility, and routinely including nature-based solutions in future decision-making processes.

“Decision-makers should fully consider nature-based solutions to achieve synergies in multiple policy areas – this requires a long-term vision and interdisciplinary approaches.”
Daan Verstand

Wageningen researchers work with a wide range of stakeholders to establish nature-based solutions that are ecologically safe and respond to the needs of local communities. Based on a library of existing nature-based solutions projects we have shown that nature-based solutions are feasible and cost-effective in complex, modern environments. This work highlights diverse nature-based solutions which simultaneously achieve outcomes for biodiversity, climate adaptation and climate mitigation while addressing societal issues related to health, food, transport, and water management.

Knowledge for Biodiversity Climate Action

Nature Outlook 2050 – Scenario Nature inclusive

Nature-inclusive scenarios that support multiple ecosystem services that contribute to meeting the major challenges facing society in the areas of climate, biodiversity, water quality and the quality of the human environment.

The Circular Landscape

By integrating urban and natural areas in a landscape system approach, we analyse how nature-based solutions can restore biodiversity while increasing urban resilience. Landscape-based visions are powerful tools for building local and regional transition plans.

Synthesising Evidence for nature-based solutions

This project creates a global database of nature-based solution projects, their underlying drivers, their challenges, and successes. Case studies explore how to make better decisions in future projects and amplify the knowledge gained from the practitioner community.

Database of existing nature-based solutions

This database shows existing nature-based solutions and demonstrates how increased roles for natural processes and biodiversity can be both realistic and feasible. Mainly implemented in the Netherlands, these schemes show that ambitious approaches to spatial planning can achieve greener, healthier, and prosperous futures. This has been developed in support of the 2120 Vision and is expanding to Europe.

Nature-based solutions for resilient food systems

How do biodiversity and circular resource use help achieve food security? Mobilising knowledge for nature-based solutions in the context of food systems at risk of climate-related disruption.

Climate-smart forestry

How will European forests respond to climate change? How should European forestry adapt to provide maximum climate mitigation potential? This project explored how forestry and forest-based industries could respond to the demands of a carbon-neutral economy.

Governing nature-positive food systems

We need better tools to help us understand the interactions, trade-offs, dilemmas, and tensions in the transition to nature-positive food systems. This project will design new methodologies to support transparent and sustainable decisions.