Recently, I've been reflecting on the surprising gap in awareness between biodiversity collapse and climate change, even within my network. Please don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying this in a judgmental way. And, with honesty, I found myself in a similar position a couple of months back. On that note, it’s fundamental to recognize and understand the intrinsic interconnection of climate change and biodiversity. Climate change is one of the 5 primary factors contributing to biodiversity loss, resulting in a decrease in nature’s services.* On the flip side, biodiversity and nature-based solutions play a crucial role in achieving climate objectives, as intact ecosystems are key for absorbing carbon emissions. I came across a study revealing that conserving nearly 50% of the global land area (excluding Antarctica) could provide 90% of nature's services to people while simultaneously meeting biodiversity representation targets.** However, only 18% of priority areas are currently protected. Equally concerning is that more than a third of these areas have high development potential for, e.g., renewable energy projects; well-intended and much-needed initiatives to speed up the energy transition. This situation raises the potential for clashes between development and conservation efforts. Overall, these numbers are an important reminder that a holistic, integrated view is needed when designing and executing conservation and development initiatives to avoid a zero-sum game situation, where one could benefit only at the expense of the other. Hats off to the team behind the paper "Mapping the planet’s critical areas for biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people". It's a must-read for investors, policymakers, project developers, and decision-makers overall, which hopefully will trigger more collaboration. See the full article 👉 https://lnkd.in/eQDA52Jf #climatechange #biodiversity #climatemitigation #naturepositive *"Nature’s services" is used interchangeably with "ecosystem services," examples of which include sediment retention, flood regulation, and carbon storage. ** Biodiversity has been assessed by employing the species area of habitat (AOH) measure for 26,709 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.
These topics are complex in themselves and require a level of knowledge that few have or aspire to for the moment. So far, I have seen several reasons for this: lack of interest, eco-fear, ignorance, disinformation or discouragement. What other reasons have you seen? In any case, such informative posts, written as neutrally as possible, are important to raise awareness and inform. I am already looking forward to more Cristian González Boeck
Thanks for sharing! I like how the thought process is evolving towards reflecting the reality of the situation!
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3mohttps://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/ really opened my eyes to the gravity of the situation – so many ecosystems and planetary boundaries are breaking down across the world. Even just looking at all the graphs of sea surface temperatures and how they are no longer slowly increasing but jumping entirely from year to year is alarming (https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/). 2023 was bad, 2024 is off the charts, and unfortunately, it looks like it's only going to get worse from here on out.