Abstract
Better stewardship of land to is needed to achieve the Paris
Climate Agreement goal of holding warming below 2°C; however,
confusion persists about the specific set of land stewardship options
available and their mitigation potential. To address this, we
identify and quantify “natural climate solutions” (NCS): 20 conservation,
restoration, and improved land management actions that
increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions
across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands.
We find that the maximum potential of NCS – when constrained
by food security, fiber security, and biodiversity conservation – is
23.8 PgCO2e yr-1 (95% CI 20.3 - 37.4). This is ≥30% higher than
prior estimates, which did not include the full range of options
and safeguards considered here. About half of this maximum (11.3
PgCO2e yr-1) represents cost effective climate mitigation, assuming
the social cost of CO2 pollution is ≥100 USD MgCO2e
-1 by 2030.
Natural climate solutions can provide 37% of cost effective CO2
mitigation needed through 2030 for a >66% chance of holding
warming below 2°C. One-third of this cost effective NCS mitigation
can be delivered at or below 10 USD MgCO2
-1. Most NCS
actions – if effectively implemented – also offer water filtration,
flood buffering, soil health, biodiversity habitat, and enhanced
climate resilience. Work remains to better constrain uncertainty
of NCS mitigation estimates. Nevertheless, existing knowledge
reported here provides a robust basis for immediate global action
to improve ecosystem stewardship as a major solution to climate
change.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 11645-11650 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | PNAS |
Volume | 114 |
Issue number | 44 |
Early online date | 16 Oct 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Oct 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Our thanks for inputs by L. Almond, A. Baccini, A. Bowman, S. CookPatton,J. Evans, K. Holl, R. Lalasz, A. Nassikas, M. Spalding, M. Wolosin,
and expert elicitation respondents. Our thanks for datasets developed by
the Hansen lab and the NESCent grasslands working group (C. Lehmann, D.
Griffith, T. M. Anderson, D. J. Beerling, W. Bond, E. Denton, E. Edwards, E.
Forrestel, D. Fox, W. Hoffmann, R. Hyde, T. Kluyver, L. Mucina, B. Passey, S.
Pau, J. Ratnam, N. Salamin, B. Santini, K. Simpson, M. Smith, B. Spriggs, C. Still,
C. Strömberg, and C. P. Osborne). This study was made possible by funding
from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Woodbury was supported in
part by USDA-NIFA Project 2011-67003-30205
Data deposition: A global spatial dataset of reforestation opportunities has been deposited on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/883444).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1710465114/-/DCSupplemental.
Keywords
- climate mitigation
- forests
- agriculture
- wetlands
- ecosystem services
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Pete Smith
- Biological Sciences, Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability - Chair in Plant & Soil Science
Person: Academic