NbS in the News

The Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) has examined the emission reduction plans of six major European oil and gas companies. Primary findings include:

– None of the companies’ plans are consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C

– BP and OMV failed to align with Paris Agreement pledges; Shell, Eni, Total and Repsol do align the Paris Agreement, [...] Read more Tweet May 13, 2020

Ecosystem restoration has the potential to create jobs on a grand scale, which will be needed in many countries in the wake of the pandemic. The World Resource Institute (WRI) makes the case for investing in tree planting in the US; according to their calculations, an annual federal investment of $4-4.5 billion for 20 [...] Read more Tweet May 5, 2020

About 85% of natural rubber is grown by small holder farmers in Asia. The Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) is working with individual farmers to transition to more sustainable practices, such as by providing financial and technical assistance to pay workers fair wages, clear land without fire, and use less chemical fertilisers [...] Read more Tweet April 24, 2020

This article tells the story of five indigenous individuals who are using their rich local knowledge, accumulated over generations, for adapting to the changing climate. Traditional practices described include:

– Digging small pits, and filling them with compost, manure and seeds before the rainy season begins, to help trap water and improve soil fertility (e.g. in [...] Read more Tweet April 24, 2020

The first four months of 2020 have seen a rise in notable commitments from big businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and in some cases stem biodiversity loss.

Amazon announced their $100 million Right Now Climate Fund in 2019, which aims to restore and conserve forests, wetlands and peatlands for carbon storage. The fund’s first [...] Read more Tweet April 24, 2020

We talked to Carbon Brief about tree planting in the UK.  If the UK government’s tree-planting targets are achieved, even with optimistic estimates of carbon sequestration they would only provide a small proportion of the total carbon capture required to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) predicts that (with a [...] Read more Tweet March 19, 2020

David Shukman, Science Editor at the BBC, spent a few hours in Wytham Woods talking to Nathalie Seddon about the recent surge of public and media interest in tree-planting. The resulting article specifically looks at UK tree planting targets and raises some valid concerns: 1) The workforce for tree planting at the scale envisaged by [...] Read more Tweet March 18, 2020

The UK government disclosed this year’s budget on the 11th March. It includes increases in spending in biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Notable commitments include:

– £640m Nature for Climate Fund to restore 35,000 hectares of peatland and plant 30,000 hectares of trees (an area about the size of Birmingham) in [...] Read more Tweet March 12, 2020

This report summarises actions required to deliver net-zero emissions in the UK by 2050, without the emergence of not-guaranteed new technologies. The authors calculated that this would require much more drastic actions than suggested by government bodies such as the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). For example, all airports would need to be closed between [...] Read more Tweet March 9, 2020

Strip mining and later mountaintop-removal for coal has caused widespread destruction of native forest in Appalachia, USA, over the past decades. Around 1.5 million acres have been ‘restored’, but rather than natural forests returning, the land is covered in degraded grassland, dominated by invasive plant species. However, some areas were re-planted with trees; this not [...] Read more Tweet March 5, 2020