Biodiversity Loss and Climate Change are Inseparable Issues
Biodiversity loss and climate change are interconnected in many ways.
On the one hand, biodiversity is strongly affected by climate change, with negative consequences for human well-being and the long-term stability of critical ecosystems. On the other hand, the conservation of biodiversity, through the ecosystem services it supports, makes an indispensable contribution to addressing climate change.
Limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as compared to a 2°C rise or higher, would reduce risks to biodiversity, ecosystems, food systems, water, and human livelihoods.
Many of the drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change are common to both challenges. There are important synergies in addressing these issues together.
Land-use change may result in increased greenhouse gas emissions, reductions in sequestration potential, biodiversity loss and a loss in the resiliency of ecosystems, compromising their adaptation capacities.
23%
of human greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, forestry and other types of land use.
Addressing behavioural change and consumption patterns, such as excessive consumption of meat, would reduce pressures on both biodiversity and climate change.
Despite this high potential contribution, land-based sequestration efforts were found to receive less than 3% of climate finances.
Investing simultaneously in ecosystem restoration, the rehabilitation of degraded agricultural and pasture lands, and ways to sustainably enhance agricultural productivity can contribute to combating climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss and enhance food security at the same time.
Climate change can intensify the drivers of biodiversity loss and worsen their already devastating impacts.
Climate change can exacerbate pressures on natural systems by interacting with drivers of biodiversity loss such as land-use change and spread of invasive alien species. It is important to address the effects of climate change in the context of interacting drivers of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and their resilience and ability to respond to the impacts of climate change.
Biodiversity and ecosystems play an important role in strengthening the global response to climate change, while delivering multiple benefits.
Better protection, management and restoration of natural and managed ecosystems can make significant contributions to the mitigation of human-induced climate change. Ecosystem-based approaches can also contribute significantly to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction thereby reducing the vulnerability of people, especially indigenous people and local communities and those disproportionately impacted, and the ecosystems upon which they depend, in the face of climate change.
Protecting and conserving biodiversity and ecosystems is critical in order to maintain and increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of ecosystems and people in the face of the adverse effects of climate change, as well as to maintain the capacity of ecosystems to store carbon.
Protected areas and other area-based conservation measures and ecosystem restoration are important tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation as they conserve biodiversity, ecosystems and their functions and services.
Diverse, well-functioning and resilient ecosystems are better able to provide society with ecosystem services and benefits that support climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and to contribute to climate change mitigation.
Realizing that adaptation needs will be reduced at global warming of 1.5°C, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystems significantly reduce their resilience and undermine their capacity for carbon storage and sequestration, potentially leading to increases in emissions of greenhouse gases.
Ecosystem-based approaches can provide climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits, such as carbon sequestration, while also delivering benefits to biodiversity and livelihoods.
All countries are affected by climate change, but the impacts tend to fall disproportionately on the poor and vulnerable, as well as those least responsible for the problem and it can intensify inequalities.
Diverse, well-functioning and resilient ecosystems are better able to provide society with ecosystem services, including water and food security, and benefits that support climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and to contribute to climate change mitigation.
Nature-based solutions and other natural climate solutions that encourage conservation, ecosystem restoration and improved land management are estimated to provide 37% of the cost-effective mitigation by 2030.
Ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation, including biodiversity conservation, the reduction of ecosystem degradation, and restoration of ecosystems, provide significant contributions to stabilizing warming to below 2°C, and closer to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, while delivering multiple co-benefits for biodiversity and sustainable development.
Afforestation and bioenergy measures may have significant negative impacts on agricultural and food systems, biodiversity, and other ecosystem functions and services.
The deployment of bioenergy on a very large scale as envisaged in some mitigation scenarios, could have unintended negative impacts on biodiversity and food security through land-use change.
Attention should be given to the direct and indirect effects of related land-use changes, including net greenhouse gas emissions, water and nutrient constraints and changes in albedo. This will be necessary to ensure that these measures contribute to climate change mitigation without unduly compromising biodiversity, food security, ecosystem resilience and adaptation to climate change.
Ecological safeguards must be put in place in order to avoid potentially devastating long-term and irrevocable losses for biodiversity and ecosystems and their resilience and integrity.
With 2°C of global warming, the global terrestrial land area that is projected to undergo ecosystem transformation will be doubled, compared to 1.5°C.
Ecosystems, food and health systems will face fewer challenges when adapting to climate change at 1.5°C of global warming compared to 2°C.
It is projected that there will be a greater reduction in global crop yields and global nutrition under global warming of 2°C compared to 1.5°C.
Climate change threatens the ecosystems and biodiversity that underpins all dimensions of human health.
The ability of biodiversity and ecosystems to adapt to the effects of climate change greatly depends on the world’s level of commitment to reducing emissions.
In order to reduce biodiversity loss and limit global warming to well below 2°C, and closer to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, strong actions and increased ambition are needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use and other industrial and agricultural activities, as well as to protect and enhance carbon sinks on land and in the oceans through ecosystem-based approaches.
Although the world's biodiversity and climate are at a critical state, we have the knowledge and capabilities to make the rapid and far reaching changes needed in all aspects of society.
Nature-based solutions are effective, cost-efficient and can be implemented now. They are essential components in the collective effort to address the inseparable crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
Credits:
Created with images by David Clode - "untitled image" • Dawid Małecki - "untitled image" • Gaetano Cessati - "untitled image" • skeeze - "mountain goat wildlife nature" • thomas0000 - "straw hat farmer sweet potato farming" • Pexels - "animal grass horn" • visavietnam - "fish aquarium sea" • Markus Spiske - "untitled image" • Tyler Butler - "untitled image" • Andrés Sanz - "untitled image" • Holger Link - "untitled image" • Pexels - "adult baby blurry" • Lernestorod - "agapostemon bee pollen" • Irina Iriser - "untitled image" • PublicDomainPictures - "corn field crop agriculture" • Dietmar Reichle - "untitled image" • Andy Brunner - "untitled image" • WelshPixie - "protea pink flower" • ssamandizadeh - "seagull flying bird" • Wow_Pho - "praying mantis stick insect bug" • AliceKeyStudio - "coral cay aquarium" • photoAC - "gardening agriculture grass" • stokpic - "jungle forest trees"