Up to half of plant and animal species in the world’s most naturally rich areas, such as the Amazon and the Galapagos, could face local extinction by the turn of the century due to climate change if carbon emissions continue to rise unchecked.
The Amazon, Miombo Woodlands in Southern Africa, and south-west Australia are among the most affected places in the world, according to new research.
Efforts to protect tropical forests in Southeast Asia for the carbon they store may fail because protection payments are too low – according to University of East Anglia research.
A study published today in Nature Communications finds that schemes designed to protect tropical forests from clearance based on the carbon they store do not pay enough to compete financially with potential profits from rubber plantations.
A passion for sustainable supply chains and the desire to do something useful, brought Becky Swinn to Lancaster University.
Now her research project comparing the carbon footprint of British, Dutch and Kenyan cut flowers has won the prize for the Best Collaborative Project at the Lancaster Environment Centre. But, like many others, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do when she finished her first degree. After spending two years doing a series of jobs she got asked to work on a project encouraging people to reduce the amount of food they throw away.
Researchers exploring how planting trees alongside crops could help put Britain on track to reduce its climate change impact have been awarded a share of £8.6m funding.
Agroforestry involves farmers planting rows of trees in crop fields to act as greenhouse gas removers. Co-delivery of food and climate regulation by temperate agroforestry, led by Dr Martin Lukac at the University of Reading, is a model-based project examining the potential use of this technique in temperate regions of the UK.