Today, a diverse group of leading ecosystem scientists and policy experts are releasing a comprehensive report describing “The science needed for robust, scalable, and credible nature-based climate solutions for the United States.”
Nature-based climate solutions like reforestation, climate-smart agriculture, and wetland restoration harness natural processes to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and slow climate change. These approaches have substantial and growing support from bipartisan lawmakers, the private sector, and conservation-minded NGOs, but scientific tools to guide implementation and to accurately monitor outcomes are not adequately developed.
To confront that uncertainty and put nature-based climate solutions on a sound scientific footing, several dozen scientists and policy experts gathered in Washington D.C. in June of this year. The resulting white paper report reviews the current state of knowledge in this field and describes the necessary research and technology investments to support effective mitigation policy.
According to the report’s lead author, Dr. Kim Novick from the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, “Nature-based climate solutions can play an important role in slowing the pace of climate change, but only if they pursued alongside economy-wide decarbonization and guided by the best-available science.”
The whitepaper authors identify critical gaps in the science needed to support large-scale implementations of nature-based climate solutions and lay out a research agenda to fill these gaps. They also outline a set of principles that should guide future assessments of the effectiveness and viability of nature-based climate solutions.
“For nature-based strategies to be effective as climate solutions, they must lead to durable, additional climate mitigation benefits that are not offset by an increase in climate warming activities elsewhere,” said report co-author Dr. William Anderegg, associate professor and director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah.
The report provides a road map for producing and using actionable, cross-sectoral information to foster programs and policies that work — while avoiding energy wasted on those that do not. It includes strategies that can be useful for public agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private sector staff working to implement nature-based solutions on the ground, as well as agencies seeking to fund investment in nature-based climate solution research and development.
“This report is one of the best I’ve seen to date on this complex topic”, says report co-author Dr. Christopher Alan Williams, professor of geography and director of environmental science at Clark University, “offering a comprehensive framework for scoping nature-based climate solutions and framing some of the serious limitations with what we are seeing in the carbon offset marketplace today.”
The report calls for a ~$1 billion (USD) coordinated investment in a national nature-based climate solution “Information Network” organized around coordinated ground-based experiments and monitoring that can inform rigorously benchmarked maps, model predictions, and protocol evaluations.
According to Dr. Benjamin Runkle, another report co-author and associate professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas: “Although the investment necessary to generate this information is not small, it is a fraction of the amount already allocated to implementation of nature-based solutions. Investing in sound science to predict, monitor, and verify the benefits of these strategies is fundamental to ensuring their success.”
“To every extent possible, we aimed to create a vision that leverages existing infrastructure, and that can be executed at the rapid pace necessary to have a meaningful impact on the trajectory of climate mitigation policy,” said Novick.
In addition to their potential to stave off climate change, nature-based solutions also have a range of other benefits, including improving air and water quality, promoting biodiversity, and providing economic opportunities. Many can also help communities adapt to a changing climate and improve resilience of agricultural and food systems.
“There is broad-scale agreement that many nature-based climate solutions benefit people and the environment through co-benefits,” said Dr. Emily Oldfield, a report co-author and agricultural soil carbon scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. “We should push to incentivize those practices using a wide range of policy tools, while acknowledging there is no one-size-fits-all approach to ecosystem-based climate solutions.”
The workshop was co-sponsored and funded by Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School, the US. Department of Energy’s AmeriFlux network, and the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program, and the whitepaper featured nearly 30 authors representing a diverse range of academic, governmental, and non-profit institutions.
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