Elin Bergman’s Post

In this week's column, David Suzuki discusses the paradigm shift needed to address the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. When forests and other green spaces are destroyed or altered, it affects the carbon and other cycles — as well as the myriad species that rely on these habitats. Read the full Science Matters: https://lnkd.in/grH-ND76

#Carbonsinks are a crucial aspect in a decarbonised future. Read this new article summary to learn more about their current condition and how we can better safeguard them going forward to make sure we stay within a safe operating space for humanity. #decarbonization #climatechange #planetaryboundaries #forests

"Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus—all well-known Stoic philosophers—had a practice of visualising potential hardships or misfortunes to cultivate resilience, emotional preparedness, and mental fortitude. The increased resilience and preparedness conferred by this practice, called Meditatio Malorum, are precisely what we need for biodiversity and ecosystems (not to mention human infrastructure and wellbeing) under a rapidly changing and uncertain climate. Meditatio Malorum offers valuable insights and techniques that can enhance the effectiveness and resilience of environmental management efforts in addressing the challenges posed by climate change." Te Pūnaha Matatini Principal Investigator Jonathan Tonkin explores how the Stoic practice of Meditatio Malorum, or the contemplation of potential misfortunes, could be valuable in environmental management under climate change.

Climate change is a symptom of a much deeper problem. It is an ecological problem. As Kate Raworth tells us, if we want to understand our eco-nomy (the art of measuring and managing our household), we first need to understand eco-logy (the way our shared home, Earth, actually works). An ecosystem is a network of organisms in relationship and communication with each other. Through their constant interaction they also produce patterns in the ecosystem, emergent phenomena that exist above the level of any individual organism or species. Something I find wonderful about this is that ecosystems that thrive in the long-term are the ones that continually regenerate the conditions for life to thrive. Every individual member of the ecosystem consumes stuff to produce itself and power its processes. Plants consume sunlight and nutrients from the soil (with the help of fungi and bacteria). We eat plants, fungi, and animals to regenerate our bodies and fuel our activity. And we also produce waste products - you know the ones I mean. A given ecosystem has a certain capacity to produce new biomass for consumption and to process waste products. If we as humans take more from an ecosystem than it produces, then it starts shrinking and could collapse. If we put more waste products into the ecosystem than it can handle, then again we cause issues. So this is where the idea of carrying capacity comes in. From a human-centric perspective, an ecosystem can only support a certain number of people. This also depends on their lifestyle, so we could have more humans living simpler lives or fewer humans living high-consumption-pollution lives. If we go beyond that carrying capacity, then we enter a state of overshoot. Rather than creating conditions for life, we’re degrading the conditions for life and spiralling towards the collapse of the life-giving systems we depend on. A useful analogy for this is imaging we have a big chunk of money, let’s call it our capital. Now if we invest our capital, it produces some amount of interest. If we can live entirely on the interest, then our capital will never decrease and we can sustain ourselves on that initial capital indefinitely. However, if we spend more than the interest, we eat into the capital and the amount of interest decreases year on year, until eventually we have nothing left and we’re ruined. Right now we’re eating into our natural capital far beyond the interest it's capable of producing for us. We’re running down our reserves, reducing nature’s capacity to provide for us and the other creatures in our world. We are in overshoot. To overcome this we need to reduce our population (which is challenging and/or unethical) or reduce the impact of our lifestyles. In the long-term we probably need both. You can learn more about this from the warm and incredibly clear Professor Bill Rees: https://lnkd.in/eSRk-3j8 How do we learn to live within the fundamental limits of our world?

By 2100, Tibetan Plateau lakes could expand by 50%, altering ecosystems, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and disrupting agriculture and infrastructure. Urgent sustainable management is needed to mitigate economic and environmental impacts

This article on benefiting nature and humans, by John Poulson and appearing in The Guardian, points toward a crucial direction for the immediate future. Planning and designing with nature in mind - especially to restore biodiversity and natural functions - is a necessity if we humans want to survive the present and future. Thanks to climate writer Katherine Hayhoe for reposting.

Natural climate solutions (NCS) can be beneficial to biodiversity and human well-being, but they can also involve trade-offs (co-impacts). Using machine learning methods to extract data from a large sample of published articles, a global evidence map of NCS co-impacts is now available and can support further NCS research and action around the world.   https://shorturl.at/F1VOq

The Earth's irrecoverable carbon is a finite resource, and once it's gone, it's gone forever. This makes its preservation a critical component of our efforts to combat #climatechange. The magnitude of the loss, as highlighted by the Conservation International paper, should serve as a wake-up call for all stakeholders to prioritize the protection of these carbon reserves. Given the scale of irrecoverable carbon loss and its significance in the context of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is imperative to develop and implement strategies to halt this trend as soon as possible. Projects that protect irrecoverable carbon are at the forefront of nature-based solutions to climate change (#nbs), as they safeguard one of the Earth's most valuable resources for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon credits generated by these projects as highlighted earlier by Permian Global (https://lnkd.in/d-yA-6U3), provide a financial incentive for their continued preservation and management, making them an essential tool for driving investment in nature-based climate solutions. As the loss of irrecoverable carbon continues, the importance of these projects and the value of the emission reductions they produce will only increase, highlighting the need for greater support and prioritization. #forests #climatechange #nbs David Stone Mike Greenwood Brooke Davis Capuano Allie Goldstein Will Anderson

Source: (iScience) Proposed Benefit-Pressure-Transformation Risk model (BPT) calculates Ecosystem Health Index (EHI) for blue carbon ecotones (mangroves, salt marshes, seagrasses) globally. 20% of BCEs are vulnerable; EHI decreases with latitude. Improving mangrove EHI enhances resilience and carbon sink function, critical for climate change mitigation.

Earth has lost 2 billion metric tons of “irrecoverable carbon” since 2018 — an amount greater than the United States’ annual greenhouse gas emissions. That’s according to research updates from Conservation International scientists who coined the term in a groundbreaking paper. Their work mapped ecosystems that function as massive vaults of planet-heating carbon, which, if emitted into the atmosphere, could not be restored by 2050 to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. New findings show some of these essential carbon reserves have been lost — underscoring the need to halt deforestation and expand protected areas, said Conservation International scientist Allie Goldstein, who co-led the research. “In order to stem catastrophic climate change, irrecoverable carbon needs to remain stored in rainforests, mangrove forests, peatlands and other ecosystems,” she said. “Humanity simply can’t afford to destroy these places.” Research updates also found reasons for hope... Dr. Leonardo Sáenz #carbonsinks #climatechange #hope #newresearch #conservation #protectedareas https://lnkd.in/eAqusMhq