Investments in nature-based climate solutions – by countries and by companies – are urgently needed to keep international climate change goals alive. These investments will help fill the gap in current climate action, in addition to providing financing for critical climate solutions in emerging economies and buying time for industrial decarbonization to catch up to what science requires.
The Implementation Gap
Last month, two new studies were released that demonstrate a significant implementation gap between society’s net zero ambitions and what we are on track to accomplish. A new study published in Science found that only 10% of nations that have set commitments under the Paris Agreement are on track to reach them on time. (In fact, we’re seeing evidence now that the current difficult macroeconomic climate is causing some countries to walk back climate finance commitments previously agreed.) Similarly, a report from Net Zero Tracker released in June found a similar implementation gap among corporate net zero targets, concluding that despite the accelerating pace of commitments, few companies have realistic plans in place to achieve their goals, especially their near-term targets.
News flash: decarbonization isn’t working. What these reports are saying – and let’s recall that earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded a similar alarm – is that we’re not moving fast enough. But nature can help, and here’s why.
When nature-based projects like afforestation or avoided deforestation are financed through the voluntary carbon market (VCM), the result is that natural systems, and the carbon stores they contain, are created or protected. Carbon storage in natural systems, while it may not always be permanent, can buy us some additional time to work toward full industrial decarbonization. To understand why, let’s look at some carbon math.
The narrow path to net zero
The IPCC says that to have a 50:50 chance of limiting warming to 1.5 oC, the world has a remaining carbon budget of, at most, 500 gigatonnes (Gt). In order to translate the global goal of eliminating, or permanently removing, all of this 500 Gt into reduction targets for individual corporations, SBTi (an organization that endorses science-based emissions targets for companies) maintains a net zero pathway that estimates the amount of annual emissions reductions necessary, assuming widespread adoption of their targets. The SBTi’s cross-sector pathway assumes that permanent carbon removal (such as by capturing carbon from the air with emerging technologies) will eventually be able to account for up to 40 Gt of global carbon emissions, leaving at least 460 Gt that must be addressed through decarbonization (reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution).
However, this number is based on some critical assumptions. First, as referenced above, it assumes that most – if not all – companies worldwide will be covered by a net zero target. Given where we are today, that’s by no means assured. Second, it puts a huge reliance on carbon removal technologies that are still unproven at the scale required. Even half the projected amount of cumulative permanent carbon removal (20 Gt) cannot be guaranteed by an industry that, to date, has achieved well under one tenth of one percent of that number. The path to net zero by 2050 is indeed narrow, and it requires nothing short of a wholesale transformation of the global economy to succeed.
But for the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume that these assumptions are met. Even then, our current situation, in which only ten percent of nations and corporations are on track to reach their targets, creates a huge risk of falling short of global net zero goals. Even a rapid uptake of new plans in the coming decade, say by an additional 65-70% of companies, would leave an implementation gap of around 100 Gt.
Enter Nature!
So if nations and corporations can’t decarbonize quickly enough, what could fill the gap? As discussed above, scaling durable carbon removal more quickly is a possibility, but cannot be guaranteed by an industry still in the early stages of its development. This leaves us with the projects available today as part of the VCM – and the most mature projects today are nature-based.
Typically these projects either avoid loss of carbon to the atmosphere by protecting land-based carbon stores like tropical forests, or they create temporary (i.e., 10-100 year) carbon removal via regrowth and restoration of natural ecosystems like forests or mangroves. The comparatively temporary nature of these projects – individual trees have finite lifespans, and forests can be lost to disturbance, even though a forest landscape may stick around for millenia – means that they are not identical to neutralizing emissions from burning fossil fuels. While the carbon from these nature-based storage projects could be released back into the atmosphere after the projects are finished, it’s also true that a forest system can stick around for centuries to millenia (just ask the redwoods). Remember where we were in 1920? A hundred years can give us a lot of time to improve our technology.
To mitigate the implementation gap, though, we don’t need these projects to create permanent carbon storage. We just need them to hold and absorb carbon long enough to allow for decarbonization plans, policies, and technologies to catch up. Investing in high quality nature-based projects is a no-regrets option to ensure that we are doing everything we can today. They are a critical bridge to the low carbon future we are trying to build together, reducing the risk that we will blow past our climate targets.
The beauty of investing in nature is that it allows us to invest today, rather than waiting for the carbon solutions that are hoped to emerge in the future. And it has so many other benefits. For example, the carbon-dense forests most vulnerable to loss are located in emerging nations, where funds for community development and nature protection are scarce: with proper incentives, the VCM can act like a funnel, moving funds from the private sector to the Global South where the need is greatest. Investing in nature will also serve to protect critical species and biodiversity, which is something we can all support.
