Biodiversity : Our strongest natural defender from climate change
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Dr N Munal Meitei
The Earth’s land and the ocean serve as natural carbon sinks, absorbing large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Conserving and restoring natural spaces and the biodiversity are essential for limiting emissions and adapting to climate impacts.
As we know, Bio-diversity — is the variety of life on Earth, from genes, viruses and bacteria to the entire ecosystems like land, hills, lakes and oceans. Biodiversity forms the web of life that depends on-food, water, medicine, a stable climate, economic growth, among others. Over half of global GDP is dependent on nature and biodiversity.
When human activities produce greenhouse gases, around half of the emissions remain in the atmosphere, while the other half is absorbed by the land and ocean. These ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain–are natural carbon sinks, providing so-called nature-based solutions to climate change.
Protecting, managing and restoring forests, for example, offers roughly two- thirds of the total mitigation potential of all nature-based solutions. Despite massive and ongoing losses, forests still cover more than 30% of the planet’s land.
But nature is in crisis. Up to one million species are threatened with extinction, many within the decades. Irreplaceable ecosystems, like parts of the Amazon rainforest are turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources due to deforestation. And 85% of wetlands which absorb large amounts of carbon, have disappeared.
The main driver of biodiversity loss remains humans’ land use pattern –primarily for food production. Human activity has already altered over 70% land, loosing habitats for many wildlife and to face them extinction.
Climate change is playing an increasingly important role in the decline of biodiversity and altered terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems around the world. This can create increased animals to spill over diseases to human for driving mass mortality.
On land, higher temperatures have forced animals and plants to move to higher elevations or latitudes and towards the poles, with far-reaching consequences. The risk of species extinction increases with every degree of warming.
In ocean, rising temperatures increase the risk of irreversible loss of marine and coastal ecosystems. For instance, 14% of the coral reefs were lost between 2009 and 2018, mostly due to climate change and ocean acidification. The rise of 1.5°C threatens to destroy 90% all remaining coral reefs which produces 60% of planet’s oxygen.
Overall, climate change affects the health of ecosystems, influencing shifts in the distribution of plants, animals and even human settlements. Human health is also affected by reduced ecosystem services, like food loss, medicine and livelihoods provided by nature.
Soil, the Earth’s living skin plays an irreplaceable role in preserving the health of Eco-system and the global Biosphere. Soil stores an extraordinary quantity of carbon: three times the amount in the atmosphere and twice the amount contained in all plants and trees.
Wetlands such as marshes and swamps–cover only 3% of the world’s land, but they store twice as much carbon as all the forests. Preserving and restoring wetlands means keeping them wet so the carbon doesn’t oxidize and float off into the atmosphere.
Ocean habitats such as seagrasses and mangroves can also sequester CO2 from the atmosphere at rates up to four times higher than terrestrial forests can. Their ability to capture and store carbon make mangroves highly valuable in the fight against climate change.
Conserving and restoring natural spaces, both on land and in water, is essential for limiting carbon emissions and adapting to an already changing climate. About one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions to achieve 1.5°C needed in the next decade could be achieved by improving nature’s ability to absorb emissions.
Halting and reversing biodiversity loss and the stabilization of climate system goes hand in hand. Climate change and biodiversity loss are part of an interlinked triple planetary crisis the world is facing today. They need to be tackled together if we are to secure a viable future on this planet.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the historic Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Bio- diversity Framework and the Aichi Biodiversity Tar-gets are the hopes for human survival. But the frameworks need synergy in steps on the field not on papers only.
The Planet is suffering irreversible damage with loss of ecosystems, bio-diversity and leads to extreme weather events that will worsen over time. The other irreversible damage includes pollution, defores- tation and large-scale resource extraction, all driven by human activity and increasing at an unprece- dented rate.
Thus, conserving Biodiversity will be the strongest natural defender from the crisis of Climate Change.
The writer is an environmentalist, presently working as DFO/Chandel
The Earth’s land and the ocean serve as natural carbon sinks, absorbing large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Conserving and restoring natural spaces and the biodiversity are essential for limiting emissions and adapting to climate impacts.
As we know, Bio-diversity — is the variety of life on Earth, from genes, viruses and bacteria to the entire ecosystems like land, hills, lakes and oceans. Biodiversity forms the web of life that depends on-food, water, medicine, a stable climate, economic growth, among others. Over half of global GDP is dependent on nature and biodiversity.
When human activities produce greenhouse gases, around half of the emissions remain in the atmosphere, while the other half is absorbed by the land and ocean. These ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain–are natural carbon sinks, providing so-called nature-based solutions to climate change.
Protecting, managing and restoring forests, for example, offers roughly two- thirds of the total mitigation potential of all nature-based solutions. Despite massive and ongoing losses, forests still cover more than 30% of the planet’s land.
But nature is in crisis. Up to one million species are threatened with extinction, many within the decades. Irreplaceable ecosystems, like parts of the Amazon rainforest are turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources due to deforestation. And 85% of wetlands which absorb large amounts of carbon, have disappeared.
The main driver of biodiversity loss remains humans’ land use pattern –primarily for food production. Human activity has already altered over 70% land, loosing habitats for many wildlife and to face them extinction.
Climate change is playing an increasingly important role in the decline of biodiversity and altered terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems around the world. This can create increased animals to spill over diseases to human for driving mass mortality.
On land, higher temperatures have forced animals and plants to move to higher elevations or latitudes and towards the poles, with far-reaching consequences. The risk of species extinction increases with every degree of warming.
In ocean, rising temperatures increase the risk of irreversible loss of marine and coastal ecosystems. For instance, 14% of the coral reefs were lost between 2009 and 2018, mostly due to climate change and ocean acidification. The rise of 1.5°C threatens to destroy 90% all remaining coral reefs which produces 60% of planet’s oxygen.
Overall, climate change affects the health of ecosystems, influencing shifts in the distribution of plants, animals and even human settlements. Human health is also affected by reduced ecosystem services, like food loss, medicine and livelihoods provided by nature.
Soil, the Earth’s living skin plays an irreplaceable role in preserving the health of Eco-system and the global Biosphere. Soil stores an extraordinary quantity of carbon: three times the amount in the atmosphere and twice the amount contained in all plants and trees.
Wetlands such as marshes and swamps–cover only 3% of the world’s land, but they store twice as much carbon as all the forests. Preserving and restoring wetlands means keeping them wet so the carbon doesn’t oxidize and float off into the atmosphere.
Ocean habitats such as seagrasses and mangroves can also sequester CO2 from the atmosphere at rates up to four times higher than terrestrial forests can. Their ability to capture and store carbon make mangroves highly valuable in the fight against climate change.
Conserving and restoring natural spaces, both on land and in water, is essential for limiting carbon emissions and adapting to an already changing climate. About one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions to achieve 1.5°C needed in the next decade could be achieved by improving nature’s ability to absorb emissions.
Halting and reversing biodiversity loss and the stabilization of climate system goes hand in hand. Climate change and biodiversity loss are part of an interlinked triple planetary crisis the world is facing today. They need to be tackled together if we are to secure a viable future on this planet.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the historic Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Bio- diversity Framework and the Aichi Biodiversity Tar-gets are the hopes for human survival. But the frameworks need synergy in steps on the field not on papers only.
The Planet is suffering irreversible damage with loss of ecosystems, bio-diversity and leads to extreme weather events that will worsen over time. The other irreversible damage includes pollution, defores- tation and large-scale resource extraction, all driven by human activity and increasing at an unprece- dented rate.
Thus, conserving Biodiversity will be the strongest natural defender from the crisis of Climate Change.
The writer is an environmentalist, presently working as DFO/Chandel