Creating Healthy Ecosystems

We can still prevent the worst impacts of climate change, but doing so requires rapidly reducing emissions across all sectors, including cities, transport, energy, and land use. Not only must we rapidly mitigate our emissions, we must also adapt to climate change’s effects on the biosphere and human systems. It turns out the best solutions to climate change are all around us: enhancing, restoring, and conserving the healthy ecosystems that support our society.

Nature-based solutions give us an opportunity to address climate change and create a more resilient world.

The challenges of food security, poverty eradication, urbanization, and water supplies are multiplied by climate change. Solutions that discretely address each issue through technological strategies often fall short of the extensive change needed. Nature-based solutions give us an alternative approach: comprehensively enhancing social and ecological systems for better societies.

Not only must we rapidly mitigate our emissions, we must also adapt to climate change’s effects on the biosphere and human systems. It turns out the best solutions to climate change are all around us: enhancing, restoring, and conserving the healthy ecosystems that support our society.

Nature-based solutions—actions that work with and enhance nature to help people adapt to change and disasters—simultaneously solve multiple global challenges. In the context of climate, ecosystem conservation, restoration, and improved land management are cost-efficient, store significant carbon, and provide ecological, social, and economic co-benefits. Nature-based solutions help communities achieve both adaptation and mitigation, and establish healthy ecosystems for future generations.

Reduction of emissions from land use change is one of cost-effective climate change mitigation strategies. Ecosystem conservation, restoration, and enhancement yields numerous co-benefits for sustainable development, social resilience, and climate adaptation.

The Carbon Institute works to measure, conserve, and restore healthy ecosystems.