Mitigation or adaptation? Carbon conservation or nature conservation? A recent paper by Chris Thomas and others looks at whether these two things can be balanced effectively.
The approach is based on mapping, for carbon and for nature. The maps for conservation importance are produced using ‘zonation’, whereby map grid squares are ranked for their importance in their species distributions. Separately, each map square is assessed for its carbon stock. The two maps are then brought together to find the areas of overlap.
Chris and his team have carried this out for Britain, and for the Americas. Looking at the carbon maps first, focusing on carbon in Britain could protect about 60% of carbon, but only a quarter of our biodiversity; for the Americas, 30% of the land could protect almost half the carbon, but only around of third of the biodiversity.
Priority areas for carbon storage in the Americas and in Britain Thomas et al 2013.
Focusing just on biodiversity has a similar imbalance. Here, we could protect over 90% of our carbon but only a quarter of our biodiversity; in the Americas, this approach could safeguard just over 70% of the biodiversity, but less than a third of the carbon.
Priority areas for biodiversity in the Americas and in Britain. Thomas et al 2013.
So, taking each objective separately clearly doesn’t give much of a benefit for whatever is not the primary focus. But can these be reconciled?
It appears that they can. Combining priority areas for both carbon and nature into a single map produces the startling result that it is possible to get around a 90% protection for both interests
Priority areas combining carbon and biodiversity conservation in the Americas and in Britain Thomas et al 2013.
So it seems that with, a carefully planned strategic approach, it’s possible to get the ultimate win-win. That’s a really encouraging result – now we just strategic leadership to take us there. And perhaps, a similar look at other ecosystem services.