Natural Climate Solutions Explained

Natural Climate Solutions Explained
How science is helping nature save itself

According to recent research, natural climate solutions (NCS) can provide a staggering 37% of the cuts needed in carbon emissions to keep global warming below 2℃, avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Previous research published by The White House in 2016 reported cuts of only 7%, so their promise seemed limited, but with the increased projection, a brighter light is now shining on earth’s forests, fields, and coastlands.

NCS are proven ways to provide carbon storage and reduce emissions by restoring and improving nature’s ecosystems. The solutions are also cost-effective and can be implemented immediately, which are not typical aspects of emission cutting projects. For example, the practice of planting shade trees among crops to anchor and enrich soil, and provide a buffer against drought, is called agroforestry.  By enriching the soil naturally, farming becomes more sustainable and the land requires less work and resources to manage, which also reduces emissions. All these benefits from planting a few trees for a few dollars. 

In fact, many of the solutions involve planting trees because of their huge impact and low cost. Though burning fossil fuels is what most of us think of when it comes to climate change, deforestation alone accounts for 10% of worldwide carbon emissions. When a tree is cut down, it releases the carbon it was storing, and an estimated 3.5 to 7 billion trees are cut down per year. 

Using a conservative average of 40 pounds of carbon dioxide absorbed per tree annually, that’s hundreds of billions of pounds of greenhouse gasses released into our atmosphere every year.

The 37% emission cutting data helped NCS gain momentum in 2017 when it was first released, however, that momentum has yet to yield results. As George Monbiot wrote in 2019, “Natural Climate Solutions…have so far attracted only 2.5% of mitigation funding, and far too little political attention...Given that they have major advantages over alternative negative emissions strategies and can also deliver wide ecological and social benefits, we call for a great increase in the attention and spending.”

It’s important for that funding and political attention to arrive, and fast. Our current climate trajectory is taking us closer and closer to a point of no return. For natural climate solutions to achieve their full potential mitigation, big actions need to take place before 2030. NCS's emission cutting potential drops to 22% if they aren’t implemented by 2050. If that becomes the case, it means we’ll be forced to rely on more expensive, less-proven solutions to bridge the ever-widening gap between where we need to be and where we are.

So the choices are either to get started soon with positive results at a low cost, or wait and depend on expensive, less effective solutions. It doesn’t seem like much of a choice at all.