On September 12, Nature4Climate.org launched the "Forgotten Solution Campaign." The hashtag #TheForgottenSolution quickly became a trending topic on Twitter. Eleven partner groups and 18 foundations came together to show their support for the Nature4Climate project. Their message was picked up by news organizations all around the world, including the BBC. The "3030 Forests, Food, and Land Challenge," as it is sometimes called, highlights the significant contribution natural ecosystems can make to climate change mitigation.
The message is clear: by 2030, protecting and recovering forests, generating more sustainably produced food, and optimizing land use may provide 30% of the climate solution required. Natural climate solutions account for less than 1% of the discussion and garner less than 3% of climate financing. But emphasizing that we need nature to combat climate change is insufficient; nature also requires our assistance to do this critical mission. Effective human interventions in natural systems are required to achieve natural climate solutions.
Nature Needs People and Here's Why
Environmentalists Jane Goodall and Harrison Ford, politicians Gov. Jerry Brown and John Podesta, and others lifted their voices to accomplish what science had failed to do: increase public awareness of natural climate solutions. According to experts, carbon storage in the forest, wetland, grassland, and agricultural ecosystems is a crucial component of global climate mitigation.
According to a recent peer-reviewed scientific study, natural climate solutions can supply more than one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation. Essentially, suppose we just let nature do its thing. In that case, the resultant natural processes might store 11 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide each year, approximately comparable to the emissions avoided by ending global oil consumption.
As a forest scientist whose research has contributed to this movement's evidence, I am a supporter. Natural ecosystems are, in fact, a crucial climate change answer that the public, land managers, and policymakers must not overlook.
Let's not forget that natural solutions come with a significant added benefit: they address much more than climate change. They also help prevent species extinction, reduce flood danger, and control the water supply in urban and rural regions.
The #Natureisspeaking campaign, started in 2014 by Conservation International, one of Nature4Climate's organizational partners, has publicly pushed the movement's primary line: people need nature. Celebrities such as Julia Roberts come out in support of nature, emphasizing that "people need nature" but "nature doesn't need humans." This public campaign claims that nature will continue to exist with or without humans, as it has for nearly 4.5 billion years, and that what people believe and do is irrelevant to nature. "Your deeds will determine your fate, not mine," Julia Roberts' Mother Nature declares forcefully. Nature is who I am. I'll continue."
The states have been confirmed in the last 4.4999 billion years, but it is not true now or tomorrow. Take a look around. As we know and understand them, natural systems are being radically changed by human activity on a global scale, and stopping and reversing these trends will require deliberate human action. An estimated 3.5 billion hectares (23 percent of the Earth's land surface) have been impacted by degradation of some kind and intensity.
People are genuinely required by nature. People and nature must collaborate as players on the same team for natural processes to continue functioning at their best and be harnessed for human and planetary benefits. Co-production is required in both protected and managed systems: people collaborating with nature for mutual gain. People make policies, enforce rules, and implement incentives and governance frameworks to conserve natural ecosystems and mitigate development's harmful effects. People must keep plastics out of streams and seas, abandoned or degraded lands must be fenced off for natural regeneration, and forest fires must be prevented by thinning.
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