The clock is ticking
There is a Netflix show named “The Umbrella Academy”. In it, one of the characters travels back in time to prevent the world’s total annihilation. The stuff of fiction, right?
Well, not really.
A CBS article from March 4 of last year claimed: “Right now our planet is in the midst of what science says is an unprecedented rate of change, unlike anything seen in tens of millions of years.” Time is obviously not on our side.
The rise of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is happening a hundred times more quickly than it should.
“Three consecutive summers, including 2021, were so warm that 3% of the German forest area was destroyed. The next decade shows a need for 500M-1B euros per year to reforest and bring resilience to those in the process of being no more” (Leo Caprez, of Brainforest, at the NOAH 2021 Summit)
There’s still time … if we act now.
Xilva’s cofounder Jamie Lawrence at a conference last year said: ”Natural Climate Solutions can contribute about one third of our mitigation needs. It’s not just about decarbonizing our built environment, a little bit less transport here and there; it’s about getting carbon out of the atmosphere too. Nature has been our proven go-to resource for millions of years, and within nature, forests represent the lion’s share of Nature Climate Solutions”.
The unsung heroes, here to save the world.
Forests don’t just sequester carbon in their woody biomasses; they also provide biodiversity, water, clean air, oxygen, and rural jobs.
They can keep on giving — if we help them.
They regenerate — if we let them.
If we are going to have half a chance of staying within the limits of a 1.5 or 2 degree world, we MUST deploy Natural Climate Solutions at scale!
But to scale we have our first problem: in order to unlock the full climate potential of forests as a Natural Climate Solution and for forest restoration to contribute fully, humanity would need to reforest approximately 200 million hectares, about the size of France, Spain, Norway, Germany and Italy combined, in the next 8–10 years. We have unfortunately deforested that amount of land - and more - over time but humanity has never reforested at that scale, and in such a short time.
Credits: WWF Brazil
The second problem of scale is that, if we are to redirect our economy towards such scalable climate solutions, we will need to shift — over the next ten years — trillions of dollars out of the economic status quo and polluting asset classes and into Natural Climate Solutions and regenerative businesses.
The World Economic Forum stated in a white-paper last September: “Saving forests to fight climate change will cost $100–390 billion per year by mid-century — yet investments in REDD+ have amounted to just $3 billion per year”
Per year!
The UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature analysis from May of last year stated: “Forest-based solutions alone — including the management, conservation, and restoration — will require USD 203 billion in total annual expenditure globally”.
The challenge is nothing less than an existential threat, and yet committed businesses are finding it challenging to deploy funds to forests: ring-fenced financial commitments are not getting deployed due to a lack of support infrastructure that can help companies, impact investors and banks understand forests and take well informed decisions.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Avoided deforestation projects can slow down the pace of climate change by avoiding emissions; improved forest management projects can stall climate change by acting as carbon sinks and forest restoration projects, at scale have the potential to drawdown significant enough quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as to roll back the hands of the climate clock.
Let’s turn back time, together!
