Would ‘Global Deal for Nature’ Solve The Climate Change?
By Christy Olivianny | May 24, 2019 1PM WIB
Nature is dealing with a rapid biodiversity loss. Scientists also predict that if the Earth faces a mass biodiversity loss, it might cause extinctions that is driven by human activities that are confounding natural ecosystems and transforming Earth’s climate.
Environmentalists and researchers suggest ‘Global Deal for Nature’ should be implemented to fix up climate change, ‘Global Deal for Nature’ itself is a map that is created based on nearly a thousand “ecoregions”. With various ecosystems and species, these ‘ecoregions’ might have a complementary role in solving climate change. The idea was led by Eric Dinerstein and was published publicly on April 2019.
The Earth’s natural ecosystems contain various organisms that interact and dependent on each other. Just like tropical forests, they contain a various tree species that are packed together, maximizing carbon storage in the forests. Forests can also alleviate natural disasters and catastrophic disease outbreaks because they are diverse portfolios of biological responses.
An illegal palm oil plantation inside the ‘Buffer Zone’ region or the boundary of the Mount Leuser ecosystem, Indonesia | Photograph by Sutanta Aditya / Barcroft Media (via Getty Images)
To restrict greenhouse gas emissions and remove gases from the atmosphere, the best solution might be storing carbon in natural ecosystems. Man-made ecosystems are bad substitutes and won’t solve the problems, they store far less carbon than natural forests, require much more attention, and costs. Another important feature of why natural ecosystems is far better than man-made ecosystems is that they are connected and influence one another. If one ecosystem is lost, it can risk to the others dramatically. In this issue of climate change, connectivity matters.
An Indonesian Biologist Rudi Putra cutting down illegal palm oil plantations and recovering the lost forests of the Mount Leuser National Park | Photograph by Laura Villadiego (via The Guardian)
By implementing ‘Global Deal for Nature’, it is possible to set aside half the surface of the Earth to protect biodiversity, the idea advances the method by specifying the amounts, places and types of protections needed to get this effort moving in the right direction.
Part of the deal would be specifically to protect and sustain elements of nature that act as sinks for carbon emissions. According to Eric Dinerstein, the plan would require a budget of some US$100 billion per year. This may sound a lot, but for comparison, Silicon Valley companies earned nearly $60 billion in 2017 just from selling apps and Americans spend around $70 billion a year on their pets.
Though there are plenty of troublesome sacrifices like enhancing technology to support the program or organizing human cooperation toward the same broad goal. But, we all have to believe the value of Earth’s biodiversity is far higher than the cost and effort needed to save it.
