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.
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.
The Global Food Security (GFS) programme has published a new report considering healthy food systems that could function within the boundaries of the Paris Agreement, following a workshop in September 2016.
Key findings include the high importance of mainstreaming messaging on the connection between food and climate change to encourage positive food system change, and that it would be highly unlikely for us to meet the terms of the Paris agreement without acting on the food system.