Paris:

Some approaches to tackling world warming can have unintended knock-on penalties for nature and the safety of biodiversity, say scientists urging a extra coordinated effort on these challenges.

“Typically by looking for an answer to an issue, we threat creating harm elsewhere,” Anne Larigauderie on the Intergovernmental Scientific and Political Platform on Biodiversity (IPBES), an knowledgeable unbiased physique, instructed AFP.

The IPBES will publish a report in December on how totally different crises — together with local weather change and biodiversity loss — are carefully associated and needs to be addressed collectively, not in isolation.

The IPBES and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) warned in 2021 {that a} siloed strategy risked “actions which, inadvertently, forestall the decision of 1 or the opposite downside, and even each.”

In Britain, for instance, an ostensibly sound coverage of planting timber on wetlands backfired when in flip these carbon-rich landscapes dried up, releasing the planet-heating emissions saved of their roots and soil.

Unfavorable results

Local weather Motion Community, a collective of non-government organisations, has warned in opposition to “false options” which promise a more healthy planet however with a price to folks or ecosystems connected.

Deliberately injecting iron into the oceans, for instance, to spice up microplankton development could appear promising however “geoengineering” strategies have raised considerations about potential repercussions.

Alison Smith, a researcher on the College of Oxford, stated iron fertilisation was “more likely to trigger large environmental harm for unsure local weather acquire.”

“Measures taken to mitigate local weather change have to be evaluated in keeping with their general advantages and dangers and never solely in keeping with their carbon footprint,” stated the Basis for Biodiversity Analysis in 2022.

Wind generators produce clear energy and cut back the dependence of vitality techniques on fossil fuels, however can pose a threat to migratory birds or bats in some places.

And constructing dams for hydroelectricity can block the passage of fish alongside waterways, lowering their populations.

‘Breaking down silos’

“With crises as huge, complicated and interconnected as local weather change and biodiversity loss, specializing in one side of the issue won’t ever be sufficient,” stated Tom Oliver on the College of Studying.

It’s “vital to look past ‘sticking plaster fixes'” equivalent to geoengineering, he stated, which “can have enormous anticipated uncomfortable side effects.”

Putting in “underwater curtains” to guard glaciers in Antarctica from warming waters — an concept floated finally yr’s UN local weather summit — might impede nutrient circulation, Lars Smedsrud, from the College of Bergen, wrote within the journal Nature this yr.

Within the quest for options to our greatest and most daunting challenges it’s “vital to have a look at the large image — not simply focus narrowly on local weather change,” stated Smith.

She is one in every of many specialists pushing for nature-based options which have “mixed advantages for biodiversity, the local weather and populations”.

A 2020 research within the journal International Change Biology concluded that “nature-based interventions had been most frequently proven to be as efficient or extra so than different interventions for addressing local weather impacts.”

And it’s in preserving present ecosystems, somewhat than attempting to recreate new ones, that the potential is biggest.

A 2023 research in Nature discovered that merely defending present forests and leaving them alone to regenerate would ship appreciable carbon removing advantages.

“There isn’t any one single silver bullet — we have to do all the pieces we will, throughout all sectors, international locations and strategies,” stated Smith.

“Breaking down silos is the one method ahead that will not trigger extra issues than it solves.”

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