Restoring Farmland to Nature Could Drastically Slow Extinctions, Fight Climate Change

 The twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are intertwined: Storms and wildfires are worsening while as many as one million species are at risk of extinction. The solutions are not small or easy, but they exist, scientists say. A global road map, published Wednesday in Nature, identifies a path to soaking up almost half of the carbon dioxide that has built up since the Industrial Revolution and averting more than 70 percent of the predicted animal and plant extinctions on land. The key? Returning a strategic 30 percent of the world’s farmlands to nature. It could be done, the researchers found, while preserving an abundant food supply for people and while also staying within the time scale to keep global temperatures from rising past 2 degrees Celsius, the upper target of the Paris Agreement. “It’s one of the most cost effective ways of combating climate change,” said Bernardo B.N. Strassburg, one of the study’s authors and an environmental scientist with Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and the International Institute for Sustainability. “And it’s one of the most important ways of avoiding global extinctions.” ...A similar and complementary tool, The Global Safety Net, was released last month. It identifies the most strategic 50 percent of the planet to protect, filtering for rare species, high biodiversity, large mammal landscapes, intact wilderness and climate stabilization. A growing number of campaigns seek to address the world’s environmental emergency by conserving or restoring vast swaths of the planet. The Bonn Challenge aims to restore 350 million hectares by 2030. The Campaign for Nature is pushing leaders to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030... The study was requested by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty that aims to preserve biodiversity. One of the authors, David Cooper, is its deputy executive secretary. A recent report by the convention showed that world leaders had failed to meet their last round of targets. The United States is the only state in the world, with the exception of the Vatican, that has not signed the treaty...MORE