Overlapping climate and nature crises must be tackled in tandem, UN panel warns

The climate and nature crises will only be successfully resolved if they are tackled together, given the way the two inter-locking threats to global stability and prosperity serve to amplify and accelerate each other.

That is the headline message of a major  report published this afternoon by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the first ever collaboration between the two high-profile UN scientific bodies.

The report, the product of a four-day virtual workshop held by leading climate and biodiversity scientists, argues that climate change and biodiversity loss have to date been largely tackled separately from one another, despite their being intrinsically interlinked. It warns that "narrowly-focused actions" that do not consider the issues in tandem can directly and indirectly exacerbate planetary breakdown, citing how poorly managed or located renewables projects or tree-planting programmes can serve to harm biodiversity while struggling to deliver promised emissions savings.

Professor Hans-Otto Portner, co-chair of the 12-person Scientific Steering Committee that produced the report, said the shift to a holistic approach to tackling climate and nature loss would entail a "profound collective shift of individual and shared values concerning nature" that should include the embrace of new metrics for economic success, warned.

"The evidence is clear: a sustainable global future for people and nature is still achievable, but it requires transformative change with rapid and far-reaching actions of a type never before attempted, building on ambitious emissions reductions," he said. "Solving some of the strong and apparently unavoidable trade-offs between climate and biodiversity will entail a profound collective shift of individual and shared values concerning nature - such as moving away from the conception of economic progress based solely on GDP growth, to one that balances human development with multiple values of nature for a good quality of life, while not overshooting biophysical and social limits."

Mass planting of monoculture crops as feedstock for 'green' fuel to replace fossil fuels, and the planting trees for carbon storage purposes in ecosystems where that have historically been no forest are just two examples cited in the report detailing how some climate policies can serve to exacerbate the destruction of nature.

The report also stresses that nature-based solutions designed to soak up carbon emissions will only prove effective if they are matched with a drive to reduce all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

"Land and ocean are already doing a lot - absorbing almost 50 per cent of CO2 from human emissions - but nature cannot do everything," said IPBES chair Ana María Hernández Salgar. "Transformative change in all parts of society and our economy is needed to stabilise our climate, stop biodiversity loss and chart a path to the sustainable future we want. This will also require us to address both crises together, in complementary ways."

The recommendation comes as businesses and governments around the world have turned to the emerging nature-based solutions market to help offset their carbon emissions and meet climate goals, arguing that tree planting and other forms of ecosystem expansion and protection efforts offer a quick and readily available means of tackling greenhouse gas emissions by increasing natural carbon sinks.

However, nature-based solutions have come under increasing scrutiny of late, with critics warning that, while it is vital to expand natural carbon sinks, some projects developed specifically for carbon offsetting can have detrimental impacts on local communities and ecosystems, while struggling to deliver promised emissions savings and offering a means for businesses to avoid taking steps to reduce their absolute emissions.

The IPCC and IPBES emphasised there are a number of actions that are a 'win-win' for tackling both the climate crises and nature loss. These include efforts to protect and restore carbon and species-rich ecosystems - for instance wetlands, peatlands, grasslands and savannahs - a pivot towards sustainable agricultural and forestry practices, and the end of all subsidies that fuel deforestation, over-fertilisation, and over-fishing.

IPCC chair Dr Hoeung Lee said today's joint report could pave the way for much-needed collarboation between climate and biodiversity researchers.

"Climate change and biodiversity loss combine to threaten society - often magnifying and accelerating each other," he said. "By focusing on synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation and adaptation, this workshop advanced the debate on how to maximise benefits to people and the planet. It also represented an important step in collaboration between our two communities."

UK Environment Minister Zac Goldsmith said the findings had highlighted the need for policymakers and businesses to tackle the nature and climate crises in tandem ahead of this autumn's crucial UN climate and nature talks.

"With the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, and the Glasgow Climate Change Conference in the UK, we have an opportunity and responsibility to put the world on a path to recovery," he said. "This hugely valuable report by the experts of IPBES and IPCC makes it clear that addressing biodiversity loss and climate change together offers our best chance of doing so."