claire_wordley_writer — Claire Wordley

Claire studied Zoology at the University of Sheffield, and completed a PhD on the impact of agriculture on tropical bats at the University of Leeds. She has since worked at the RSPB and University of Cambridge, and is now juggling freelance writing and activism. Follow her on Twitter @clairefrwordley

As the climate crisis finally starts to get some of the attention it deserves, there is a Cinderella issue left behind. The destruction of biodiversity gets a fraction of the media attention that climate change does, yet, if left unsolved, it could cause just as much damage as a heating climate.

Most of us have a basic understanding of the climate crisis. Mostly by burning fossil fuels, humans are increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, causing the Earth’s surface temperature to heat up with dangerous effects.

The biodiversity crisis is in many ways more complex, messier, and less clearly defined. Here I use the term to mean species (of plant, animal, fungi, etc) going extinct, populations of various species declining, and ecosystems like forests being destroyed and damaged.

The climate crisis is a huge and rapidly growing threat to the natural world, but it is not the only one, nor is it the one currently having the most impact. The biggest threats to nature right now (in order) are land and sea use change, for example turning forests to farms; unsustainable hunting, fishing, and harvesting; climate change; pollution; and species from one part of the world being let loose in another. This means that fixing the climate crisis alone won’t save nature or maintain healthy human societies.

Looking at both crises together shows there are ways to safeguard our planet; they might just require us to see the world a little differently. Changing our mindsets to understand how interdependent natural systems are, and how interconnected we are with nature, could pave the way to understanding that the solutions to planetary crises also need to be interlinked.

‘Green’ solutions that could do more harm than good

As the world wakes up to the climate crisis, multiple solutions are being proposed. There is often an assumption that any climate fix is good for nature, especially those which involves planting trees; but this is not always the case.

Many plans for staying under 1.5 degrees of heating have been criticised for relying heavily on ‘negative emissions’ to draw carbon from the air. One of the negative emissions technologies which was most used in these scenarios was BECCS – BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage. This involves growing trees or other plants, burning them, and storing the carbon released from the burning underground.

There are many problems with relying on BECCS, but I’ll stick to the impacts on biodiversity, which are pretty staggering. The essential problem is that for BECCS to work at the scale proposed, it would use an area of land 1-2 times the size of India. This would mean growing biodiversity-poor tree farms either where species-rich forests used to stand, or on farmland, which would force people to destroy nature elsewhere to eat. Some scientists even think that using BECCS at this scale could have impacts on biodiversity as much as that caused by heating the planet by 2.8°C.

What about soaking up carbon by planting lots of trees, another proposed ‘negative emissions technology’? The fact that this is Donald Trump’s favourite idea doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a bad thing, but it’s certainly not always a good one. When it comes to tree planting, as with so many things in the messy world of biodiversity, the answer is ‘it depends’. Restoring native forests is generally a good idea. But not all treeless areas are barren deserts; many species rely on diverse ecosystems that don’t have many trees, like peat bogs. And then there is the question of which trees you plant.

Palm oil plantations: Not forests! / Photo by Soo Ann Woon from Pexels

The UN definition of a forest is an area greater than half a hectare in area, that has trees at least five metres high and more than 10% canopy cover. This includes ‘forests’ that would make any conservationist weep; monocultures of non-natives grown for timber and a host of other tree factories which sustain little or no life.

In China, some of the widely praised tree planting efforts ended up as plantations of single types of trees, not always native to the area, which caused declines in birds and bees. Almost two thirds of the land pledged for ‘forest restoration’ globally will actually be used for profitable timber plantations and agroforestry. Timber plantations in particular are nothing like the rich, complex, diverse forests which biodiversity thrives in – they also store less carbon. Calling this restoration seems like a pretty sick joke when you’ve seen what a real forest looks like.

Even planting native trees is not always the best way to restore nature. Where local conditions permit, allowing forests to regrow naturally is usually the best solution for biodiversity and carbon storage. However, it yields less impressive statistics than a ‘number of trees planted’ so is often unpopular with policymakers.

Synergistic solutions

Luckily, nature has her own ways to cool the planet, if we let her. So called ‘natural climate solutions’ address both the biodiversity and the climate crises – in fact, they could provide over a third of climate mitigation until 2030. However, they come with the emphatic disclaimer that they are not an alternative to quitting fossil fuels. At least three quarters of humanity’s emissions come from oil, gas, and coal, and no amount of natural climate solutions can cancel those out. Natural climate solutions should be done in addition to scrapping fossil fuels, not instead of. This especially matters when richer nations or people pay poorer ones for schemes to soak up carbon; it has to be clear that this does not grant a licence for the rich to maintain a polluting lifestyle. Fossil fuels have to go, no questions.

Forests are more than just trees

OK, now that is out of the way, let’s look at a few of the ways that tackling the biodiversity crisis can also help the climate. Firstly, we all know that conserving ancient forests is important to store carbon and to save species. But it turns saving the trees alone is not enough to tackle climate change – we need to invest in conservation measures to protect the animals too.

A recent study looked at ‘silent forests’ – forests where animals have declined, usually due to hunting. It turns out that when seed-dispersing animals like primates and birds are hunted from a forest, the forest does not regenerate as vigorously, and the types of trees present in the forest change. Trees whose seeds are dispersed by animals are often particularly carbon-rich, so hunting could reduce the carbon storage capacity of forests significantly.

Animals are as much a part of a forest as trees are, and hornbills like these are key to forest regeneration / Photo from PxHere

Reducing unsustainable hunting (often for the pet and medicine trades) and bringing back vanished species is not always easy. Blanket measures to keep people out of forests have often been abusive and/or ineffective, and it is clear that more nuanced strategies are needed. But as it becomes clear that forests work best when they are teeming with life of all sorts, forest-based climate policies must see forests as more than just trees.

Our biggest allies against climate change

It’s not just on land where animals are needed to fight the climate crisis. Whales are incredible carbon stores. They are, simply put, massive, storing up to 33 tonnes of carbon each. When they die naturally and their bodies sink to the ocean floor, that carbon is kept out of circulation for centuries. Numbers of many whale species are increasing again after being decimated by overhunting – but there is the potential for about four times more whales in the sea.

Whales have an impact even beyond the huge carbon storage capacity of their bodies. They bring nutrients like iron and nitrogen up to the top of the ocean when they poop, and move them across the oceans when they migrate. Their floating poop increases the growth of one of the tiniest organisms on the planet – phytoplankton. Phytoplankton may be small but they are numerous, and they absorb vast amounts of carbon. More whales would help to grow more phytoplankton – in fact if whale numbers rebounded to their original numbers, whales could directly and indirectly absorb about 4% of current emissions.

Although few nations continue to hunt whales, they still face multiple threats, several of which are themselves related to the climate crisis. Plastic – implicated in whale deaths in multiple ways – is made from fossil fuels, and plastic production is growing exponentially with no signs of slowing down. One of the loudest noises in the ocean is that caused by seismic air guns used to map for oil and gas drilling. Whales are sensitive to noise pollution; it can affect their hunting and mating, stress them, and even directly kill them. If we rein in fossil fuel use it would have multiple benefits for these gentle giants, who would in turn help us to undo the damage wrought by a heating world.

Photo by Gabriel Barathieu from Wikimedia Commons

Whales reduce emissions so much that strategies for their conservation should be written into the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to an IMF report. While saving whales is not a silver bullet for emissions – and is a rather slow mechanism – it could spark a new way of thinking, to recognise the climatic importance of conserving entire natural systems rather than planting monocultures of trees.

Flex your mussels

There are plenty more examples which show that for natural climate solutions to be effective, we need more than rows of carbon absorbing sticks. Conserving and restoring whole ecosystems tackles the climate and biodiversity crises together, and can help us to weather the storms we’ve already created. Mussels save grass in carbon-rich saltmarshes from dying in droughts. Wolves support young trees to grow. Beavers help to reduce flash flooding. Otters play a role in protecting carbon-absorbing kelp forests from sea urchins.

Solutions to the climate crisis must recognise the interconnectedness and interdependence of living systems, and understand that their resilience comes from their complexity and messiness. Lines of a single type of tree with no animals are not forests, and won’t function like forests. Oceans without whales won’t work as they do now. Saltmarshes die without mussels, and kelp forests die without otters. ‘Solutions’ like BECCS might fix one problem but cause worse ones.

Transformative change

Last year there was a trumpeting call for ‘transformative change’ in society to stop our current dismemberment of nature. This call came not from uncooperative crusties, but from scientists who authored the UN Global Assessment report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

These scientists propose change at a radical level. As well as saying that we need more responsibility and equality in society, they also stress that the interconnectedness of natural systems needs to be widely understood and valued, that we need a new relationship with nature, and that we need to learn to live well with less. This includes changing our economies to function without economic growth.

These are not new ideas, of course – many ancient and Indigenous cultures put our interconnectedness with nature at the heart of their philosophies, which may explain why forests are doing better on Indigenous land than elsewhere. The UN report recognises this, calling for more Indigenous and local communities to be involved in conserving and restoring natural systems.

The type of society the report thinks we need in order to conserve biodiversity – and to provide natural climate solutions to help address the climate emergency – sounds like one which would be better for the vast majority of people, too. The scientists are under no illusions that this change will be easy: “By its very nature, transformative change can expect opposition from those with interests vested in the status quo, but such opposition can be overcome for the broader public good.” But if overcoming that opposition is what it takes to see forests teeming with birds and monkeys, oceans overflowing with whales, and healthy and equitable human societies marrying new knowledge with ancient wisdom, it seems like a struggle worth joining.

Not all climate solutions help nature