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| Wed, 8th Jul 2020 13:39:00 |
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One key solution to the world’s climate woes? Canada’s natural landscapes |
Scientists have found protecting nature can provide more than one-third of the emissions reductions required to meet the world’s 2030 climate targets, thrusting Canada — home to 25 per cent of the planet’s wetlands and boreal forests — into the hot seat.
Canada’s seaweed, dirt and trees have managed to do something that’s seemed impossible for the world’s most advanced technocratic nations: provide a legitimate, ongoing and cost-effective climate solution.
Perhaps the biggest boost to the idea of these so-called ‘nature-based climate solutions’ came in late 2017 when a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the simple act of preserving wetlands, forests and grasslands could provide more than one-third of the emissions reductions needed to stabilize global temperature increases below 2 C by 2030 under the Paris Accord.
For countries looking to make quick climate gains, the idea of these nature-based climate fixes created quite the buzz.
In early 2020, before the pandemic hit, hundreds of people from across the country gathered in Ottawa to discuss what a pivot to nature-based climate solutions in Canada might entail.
“Nature-based solutions give us the opportunity to tackle the challenges of climate change and biodiversity at the same time,” Wilkinson said to the more than 400 attendees.
But at the conference another voice emerged to urge Canadians to think beyond the terms of “land-use” when it comes to nature’s role in the battle against climate change.
“Land relationship planning,” Steven Nitah, Dene leader and former Northwest Territories MLA, pitched to the crowd.
“Think of the phrase ‘land-use planning,’ ” he challenged the audience. “Land use — how we use the land. That doesn’t talk about land relationship planning.”
Nitah argued the concept of “land relationship planning” should enter the collective vocabularies of Canadians as the country imagines pathways forward for nature-based climate solutions.
Earth has regulated its own carbon cycle for eons, and it has only taken humanity 150 years to throw that cycle out of whack. Fortunately, the systems that balanced carbon in the atmosphere, in soil and the oceans, in living beings and inert rocks, still exist and still have the potential to recover. But doing that requires space.
“The capacity for nature to bounce back is incredible,” said Lara Ellis said of ALUS Canada, a national charity that works with farmers on projects that restore and benefit the natural landscapes, such as wetlands or good habitat for pollinators.
Read original full article
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