Biodiversity: A big plus for REDD+
A report published during COP-15 investigates and maps the geo-spatial relationships between carbon stocks and species richness worldwide to assess the degree of potential synergy between climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation efforts. The report, titled "Global congruence of carbon storage and biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems", was published on 17 December by the online journal Conservation Letters. It finds a strong association between carbon stocks and species richness, suggesting that potential synergies could be high, but unevenly distributed. The report finds that many biodiversity-rich areas would benefit from 'carbon-based conservation', while noting that other areas could benefit from what it calls 'complementary funding' related to their carbon content. However, the study warns that some biodiverse-rich areas would not benefit from carbon-based conservation and could even come under increased pressure if REDD were widely implemented. Their overall conclusion: "Our results suggest that additional gains for biodiversity conservation are possible, without compromising the effectiveness for climate change mitigation, if REDD takes biodiversity distribution into account." In a separate statement, lead author Bernardo Strassburg was less cautious: "Overall REDD would have a very positive effect for biodiversity conservation, which makes it a very powerful tool that simultaneously addresses two of the greatest global environmental crises of our age," said Strassburg.
The report is clearly good, if unsurprising, news for proponents of biodiversity conservation worldwide, with the exception of those concerned primarily with certain carbon-poor ecosystems. Given that this was a global study, the strong statistical results were linked to the evidently low levels of biodiversity of carbon-poor areas such as deserts and polar regions and the extensive biodiversity found within carbon-rich tropical forests in particular. The authors note that their analysis was undertaken at a relatively coarse scale and suggest that further detail might even increase the level of congruence found.
The report discusses specific ways in which the contribution of REDD to biodiversity conservation could be enhanced. These include:
- the notion of a 'biodiversity premium' that could be estimated for emissions from biodiversity-rich areas;
- the idea of assigning a percentage of REDD financing to target biodiversity-rich areas that might not be preserved for their carbon content alone, and;
- promoting cooperation between REDD programmes and those for biodiversity conservation at national and international levels.
The report lends further support to the idea that REDD should not proceed as a purely emissions-based endeavour, but should carefully incorporate biodiversity conservation as one of the key elements of the 'Plus' in REDD-Plus. To do so will require breaking down remaining institutional and other barriers between climate change and biodiversity conservation efforts -- barriers which originate in part from their reliance on different international conventions. As a practitioner in the field of biodiversity conservation, and as someone who (obviously) is interested and intrigued by the power and potential of REDD, I eagerly look forward to opportunities to examine and test these and other approaches to enhancing the synergies between biodiversity conservation and REDD.
REDD-Plus welcomes the contributions of academics, practioners and others interested in, or working at the nexus of, REDD and biodiversity conservation. You can start by registering with the site and joining our newly created REDD and biodiversity group.
