Creating the right climate for conservation

This article originally appeared in The Circle: Arctic Biodiversity: Where is it heading?. The Circle shares perspectives from across the Arctic, and the views expressed here are not necessarily those of WWF. See all Circle issues here.

As a conservation organization, WWF’s mission is to create a world where people and wildlife can thrive together. But as VANESSA PÉREZ-CIRERA writes, that goal is increasingly threatened by the climate crisis: as we are seeing all too vividly in the Arctic, warmer temperatures are destroying ecosystems that have evolved over millions of years, pushing untold numbers of species toward extinction.

THE TWIN CRISES of biodiversity loss and climate change are closely interwoven and often mutually reinforcing. We can’t halt nature loss without addressing the climate crisis—and we can’t stop the Arctic from warming without protecting nature. For example, the climate crisis is altering many species’ ranges, forcing them toward the poles or higher ground. The decisions we make about conservation today may need to be revisited tomorrow depending on climate shifts. As WWF’s recent Feeling the Heat report documented, some of our most treasured species are threatened by world leaders’ failure to agree to ambitious climate targets.

Protecting the earth’s natural assets

Meanwhile, nature offers many solutions to the climate crisis. Natural systems on land and at sea already absorb massive volumes of greenhouse gas emissions. Protecting and enhancing them will be vital to preventing runaway global warming. A growing number of governments and private sector actors are embracing so-called “nature-based solutions” to help reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

Nature will also play a vital role in helping us adapt to impacts of the climate crisis that we are already seeing, not to mention the future impacts that we know are inevitable. For example, vegetation can reduce flooding (and even reduce urban temperatures), while mangroves can reduce the impacts of storm surges.

But focusing on the climate crisis without regard for nature’s vulnerabilities risks failure on both fronts. Some solutions designed to address carbon emissions—such as large-scale monoculture plantations of energy crops—can actually threaten biodiversity.

These synergies and interrelationships were recently explored by the two intergovernmental bodies charged with advising policymakers on the respective issues: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. These organizations stated that “only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem, which also includes the actions and motivations and aspirations of people, can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and maximize the beneficial outcomes.”

Applying a nature lens

This is something that WWF’s global climate and energy practice has long recognized. As its name suggests, the practice focuses on the climate crisis, but always considers the challenge through a “nature lens.”

The goal of our work on climate is to hold warming below 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—the more ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement—by reaching net-zero global emissions by mid-century. We recognize that warming beyond this threshold will threaten nature and the natural systems on which human societies depend.

A big part of our work lies in pushing governments and private sector emitters toward more ambitious climate targets. We are also working to ensure that, as they consider the role of nature-based solutions within their climate policies and actions, these emitters follow the highest standards of environmental integrity and biodiversity protection.

But our work goes further than this. We firmly believe that without systemic changes in how we organize our economies, we will be unable to address either the climate or the biodiversity crises. Both require policymakers and private sector organizations to understand and seek to address the environmental consequences of their actions.

This requires raising public consciousness, building coalitions and coordinating action and broad engagement. WWF’s climate and energy practice, which operates from 60 WWF offices around the world, is carrying out this engagement in pursuit of our climate goals—which, in turn, serve our broader objectives of conserving nature and human well-being.

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VANESSA PÉREZ-CIRERA is deputy global lead of climate and energy at WWF. She is an environmental economist focusing on international climate policy and economics.