PUTTING CLIMATE AND BIODIVERSITY INTO SILOS RAISES RISK OF CRISIS

Adopting an integrated approach can help to identify solutions that may otherwise get missed.

By Carina Manitius

The world’s thinking around nature has changed drastically over the last five years. Historic, though still insufficient, amounts of resources have been directed towards addressing the climate crisis, and we have deepened our understanding of the ways in which we depend upon biodiversity and nature more broadly.

While this evolution in thinking is welcome, current approaches treat climate change and biodiversity loss as two separate and distinct challenges, despite historical evidence of their close interconnection.

More than 250 million years ago, the Earth experienced its largest ever mass extinction event, known as “the great dying”, which wiped out 95% of life on Earth. Nature did not recover for the next 10 million years.

New studies into its causes have identified two familiar culprits: global warming from increases in carbon dioxide levels — unlike today, due to natural causes from volcanic activity — and a period of increased biodiversity loss. Together, these crises pushed ecosystems to a tipping point, causing them to collapse. This calamity demonstrates the fundamental connection between the climate and biodiversity.

Today, the Earth is again at a tipping point — temperatures are rising at the fastest rate in recorded history and scientists warn that we are already living through the sixth mass extinction. If we want to avoid another system-wide collapse, we need to approach these crises in a holistic way, one which appreciates the climate and biodiversity as intricately and inextricably intertwined — part of one natural system, threatened by both climate change and biodiversity loss.

The Limits Of A Siloed Approach

Our current understanding of the risks we face from the climate and biodiversity crises is based on an isolated approach to risk assessment – one which treats the risks created by climate change as separate and distinct from the risks created by biodiversity loss. This siloed approach fails to recognise the ways in which these crises feed into and compound one another, leading to an underestimate of the overall risks faced.

The Earth’s climate and biodiversity systems are deeply interconnected, with the impacts of one crisis magnifying the impacts of the other. For example, climate change is driving an increase in the frequency of flooding in some regions, through both changes in precipitation patterns and sea level rise. At the same time, the degradation of ecosystems is reducing their capacity to act as a natural barrier against floods. Isolated assessments would correctly conclude that both climate change and biodiversity loss are increasing the risk of flooding. However, they would fail to capture the extent to which these risks compound one another, resulting in a cumulative risk which may be greater than the sum of its parts.

At the same time, biodiversity loss is itself a driver of climate change. Healthy ecosystems act as a carbon sink, storing large amounts of carbon sequestered in organic material over millenniums that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. As biodiversity loss causes these ecosystems to degrade, the stored carbon is leaked back into the atmosphere, creating an additional source of emissions. The degradation of peatland ecosystems alone is responsible for an estimated 5% of global carbon emissions each year.

By not accounting for these feedback effects and compound impacts, siloed approaches do not capture the full extent of the risks faced, especially the risk of breaching a collective tipping point which could cause widespread destabilisation.

The way we understand risk frames the decisions we make, especially when dealing with decisions about the future, which is uncertain and constantly evolving. Our understanding of climate- and biodiversity-related risks therefore shapes the way we go about addressing these crises. Our current, siloed approach leaves decision makers with an incomplete and underestimated account of the risks faced. Decisions based on this siloed understanding may therefore lead to wasted efforts and unintended consequences, leaving us stuck with “solutions” which leave us no better off.

For example, most scenarios for hitting our climate targets look only at the impact of interventions on climate change, without considering their biodiversity impact. These scenarios depend heavily on negative emissions technologies such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) — the idea that we can grow plants, absorb carbon from the atmosphere, burn them to generate energy, and capture the carbon to be permanently stored underground.

While such technologies may indeed reduce carbon levels in our atmosphere, the associated land requirements would threaten to deepen the already severe biodiversity crisis. By not accounting for the biodiversity impacts of BECCS, existing scenarios are not capturing the true net impact of such an intervention.

THE WIN-WIN-WIN OF AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

There is immense benefit to be gained from adopting an integrated approach to climate and biodiversity, as doing so can help to identify solutions that may otherwise go unidentified or undervalued.

For example, increasing the recyclability of materials reduces the energy required to create new products, reducing emissionsa win for climate. Increased recycling also reduces the demand for additional raw materials extracted from nature — a win for biodiversity. If these benefits are taken in isolation, the intervention may be considered too costly, but when considered together under a holistic approach, it becomes a no brainer. This is especially true when co-benefits beyond nature are also considered, such as benefits to businesses (reduced costs), consumers (lower prices), or human health (reduced pollution). Recycling is just one example of many solutions which present this type of win-win-win opportunity.

Forward-thinking policy makers and regulators recognise these benefits and are already moving towards a more integrated approach. The European Commission is set to implement the first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in June. The standards will require 50,000 large companies to report sustainability-related performance metrics and targets. The standards go beyond greenhouse gas emissions to include biodiversity, pollution, water, and other resource use.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), a market-led initiative developing a voluntary disclosure framework for nature-related risks, is also adopting an integrated approach. In developing its framework (to be released in September), the TNFD has included the “climate-nature nexus” as one of its key principles.

The approach of both the ESRS and TNFD indicate that the direction of travel is towards integrating climate and nature. Businesses who fail to do so may, therefore, get caught playing catch-up or miss out on substantial opportunities.

Implementing An Integrated Approach

While the need to adopt an integrated approach to climate and biodiversity is clear, there remain challenges with implementation. The methods and data needed to assess biodiversity-related risks are still a work in progress and are less developed than for climate-related risks, which have received far more attention in the preceding decades. At the same time, while there is awareness of the interlinkages between climate change and biodiversity loss, there is need for increased resources to be dedicated to better understanding them.

Despite these challenges, progress is being made. Organisations such as the World Bank, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and others have begun developing scenarios which include both climate change and biodiversity loss. At the same time, the TNFD is developing more clear methodologies on how to assess nature-related risks and guidance on integrating climate into that assessment. Businesses looking to adopt an integrated approach can align with these initiatives.

More than 250 million years after “the great dying”, the Earth again finds itself at a perilous tipping point. However, this time the changes are human caused, meaning we possess both the power and the responsibility to stop the worst from happening.

If we want to do so, it is clear we need an integrated approach — one which recognises the interconnectedness of our natural systems and our position within them. The benefits of doing so are clear, and the stakes could not be higher.