CAN Briefing: The Role of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Climate Change Mitigation Ambition and Adaptation & Resilience, June 2021

Our planet is facing climate, biodiversity, poverty and health crises and is approaching dangerous tipping points. Addressing these crises in silos is jeopardising our ability to prevent climate change and ecological collapse, to eradicate poverty and to reduce the risk of future global pandemics. The world’s top climate and biodiversity scientists have underlined that we need to tackle biodiversity loss and climate breakdown together^[1]. Protecting and restoring nature is crucial to addressing these crises in an integrated and mutually supportive manner; but importantly this must be in parallel to, not instead of, an urgent fossil-fuel phase-out and economy-wide emissions reductions. 

Why climate ambition needs biodiversity:

• Biodiversity is the basis of the climate regulation services provided by nature. Natural ecosystems play a crucial role in climate change mitigation by both storing large amounts of carbon in vegetation and soils, and sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Hence protecting, restoring and better managing ecosystems on land and at sea – such as forests, grasslands, peatlands, seabeds, seagrass, kelp beds and wetlands – is essential to avoid the release of ecosystem carbon stocks and ensure they act as sinks, rather than sources of carbon.
  • These actions need to be carried out urgently, as sequestration and storage of carbon takes place over a long period of time.
  • It is fundamental that we see immediate and rapid economy-wide emission cuts this decade to secure future climate benefits of nature protection and restoration and to avoid biodiversity-rich ecosystems being converted in coming decades to bioenergy crops or BECCS in the name of reaching the 1.5ºC goal.
• Biodiversity also plays a vital role in climate adaptation, by reducing the vulnerability and increasing the resilience of societies and ecosystems to environmental shocks caused by climate change. For example, nature helps to reduce exposure to the impacts of climate change (e.g. restoring and protecting our coastal ecosystems helps to defend against flooding) and through participatory and rights-based approaches, actions working with nature can help to build the adaptive capacity of local communities

Why climate ambition must support biodiversity:

• Biodiversity and ecosystems are humanity’s life-support systems, but these systems are rapidly collapsing worldwide with climate change as one of the greatest drivers. As ecosystems degrade and break down, they release stored carbon, triggering a dangerous feedback loop of greenhouse gas emissions and reduced capacity of ecosystems for greenhouse gas sequestration, compromising the world’s ability to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement
• Biodiversity underlies ecosystem integrity, stability and adaptive capacity. In order to keep that large amount of carbon currently in the biosphere stored for a long time, it is critically important that ecosystems are able to maintain their integrity, stability and adaptive capacity. Hence protecting, restoring and sustainably managing natural ecosystems alongside phasing out fossil fuels is vital to achieving the 1.5ºC goal.
• Protecting nature is critical to prevent the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people and reducing the risk of future pandemics. COVID-19 has shown that halting the degradation and loss of natural ecosystems is a public health as well as climate priority. Protecting nature is not only important to prevent future pandemics, but also critical for a just, equitable and sustainable financial recovery.

Why the current UNFCCC process is undermining progress on joint climate and biodiversity action:

• No negotiations on measures to operationalise the ecosystems provisions of the Paris Agreement: nature is not on the negotiating agenda at COP26, yet there are vital provisions under the UNFCCC (Art 4.1d) and the Paris Agreement (preamble and Art 5), plus para15 of COP decision 1/CP.25 that must be operationalised in order to achieve integrated action to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.
• The definition of “forest” is flawed, leading to perverse outcomes: the definition does not distinguish between different types of forested landscapes (monoculture plantations are treated as equal to complex biodiverse natural forests), it cannot be used to address issues of degradation, it allows areas that are ‘temporarily destocked’ to count as forested, and it sets such a low bar for ‘deforestation’ that ecosystem collapse will have in many cases occurred before the threshold is reached.
• Current accounting rules are not fit for the purpose of assessing climate mitigation activities: the land use and forestry accounting under the Convention allow enormous volumes of GHG emissions to go unaccounted for, and the focus on net flows obscures the important role of ecosystem integrity and stability (underpinned by the functional role of biodiversity) for reducing current and future risk of emissions from ecosystems.
• The ocean and other important marine ecosystems are being ignored: while mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrasses – referred as “coastal blue carbon” – are currently included under some national climate strategies, as planned by the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, the ocean and associated ecosystems still remain under-represented.

What do Parties to the UNFCCC need to do?

1- Operationalize key ecosystem provisions of the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement by

• Acknowledging that deep GHG emission cuts by 2030 alongside urgent action on nature conservation and restoration is absolutely essential to achieving the 1.5ºC goal and net-zero CO₂ emissions by mid-century in a way compatible with biodiversity conservation;
• Setting up an SBI and SBSTA joint work programme to address and agree on common approaches to operationalise Article 5 and the preamble of the Paris Agreement to conserve, enhance and support the long-term stability of carbon sinks and reservoirs in ways that support biodiversity; and
• Rejecting those 1.5ºC pathways that rely on large-scale deployment of land-based CDR such as afforestation and BECCS by 2050, given the likely severe land conversion (including in biodiversity hotspots) they would likely cause.

2 -Uphold and secure Community and Indigenous Land Rights by ensuring that a rights-based approach is followed during the UNFCCC policies, implementation and strategies for embedding the role of ecosystems in climate action. Indigenous rights are imperative to climate justice.

3 – Embed the protection of nature into national climate plans (NDCs, National Adaptation Plans and Long-term Strategies) by prioritising avoiding emissions from carbon stocks by protecting and enhancing natural ecosystems; ensuring that land and ocean-based government policies have strong safeguards; facilitating synergistic partnerships between indigenous peoples, conservationists and governments; investing in sustainable agriculture; raising the need to end overfishing and transition to low-impact ecosystem-based fisheries management; and aligning national climate plans with commitments under the CBD.

4 – Integrate nature into COVID-19 stimulus packages and recovery plans by ensuring investments in COVID-19 do the following: protect and build on previous conservation investments (without relaxing environmental regulations); prioritise large-scale conservation and restoration efforts; prioritise ‘green’ infrastructure development; reform and redistribute subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity and people; and are tailored to relevant natural, cultural and socioeconomic policy contexts in order to ensure inclusive governance and support IPLCs’ rights and role.

5 – Increase UNFCCC-CBD convergence by working towards the adoption of a transformative Global Biodiversity Framework at CBD COP15; using existing initiatives and coalitions like the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature to better connect the CBD and UNFCCC and push for integrated action to address the linked crises; strengthening domestic policy coherence between climate and biodiversity such as through aligning NBSAPs and NDCs; and making joint calls for more structured engagement between the two Conventions in the COP15 and COP26 Decisions.

6 – Revise and enhance current carbon accounting rules by implementing a comprehensive accounting system, as per the approach developed by the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounts and elaborated by Keith et al. 2021^[2], to: reflect the importance of maintaining and restoring ecosystem integrity for stable, long term carbon storage and reducing emissions; facilitate integrated action on biodiversity and climate; and maintain and enhance other ecosystem assets, services and benefits to humans.

7 – Agree on robust rights-based social and environmental safeguards under Article 6 by ensuring that such robust safeguards include a grievance mechanism governed by an independent body; adopting a partial cancellation rate for transferred credits to ensure real emission reductions; and ensuing that dialogues on Article 6 are used to reaffirm the importance of environmental and social integrity of carbon markets, increase ambition and uphold human rights and Indigenous Rights.

8- Include spatial mapping of nature, carbon and other ecosystem services in NDCs, NBSAPs and wider national development planning by developing a common set of agreed principles and criteria under the UNFCCC, underpinned by a common accountability framework, to guide mapping of carbon, biodiversity and ecosystem services; and supporting data collection, management and development of spatial mapping tools and guidance.

9 – Call for improving integration of climate and biodiversity through further IPCC-IPBES joint work in advance of the 2023 Global Stocktake, which provides comprehensive assessments of the importance of ecosystem conservation for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and of the negative biodiversity impacts of various 1.5ºC emission pathways depending on how much they use land-based carbon dioxide removal such as afforestation and BECCS.

^[1] https://www.ipbes.net/events/launch-ipbes-ipcc-co-sponsored-workshop-report-biodiversity-and-climate-change

^[2]  Heather Keith, Michael Vardon, Carl Obst, Virginia Young, Richard A. Houghton, Brendan Mackey,

“Evaluating nature-based solutions for climate mitigation and conservation requires comprehensive carbon accounting”, Science of The Total Environment, Volume 769, 2021, 144341, ISSN 0048-9697,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144341. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720378724