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A small group of men plant tree seedlings in a muddy patch near established mangrove trees.
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Haitian-based organization FoProBiM, a CEPF grantee, engages Haitians in mangrove restoration.
Credit: 
© Goldman Environmental Prize

While climate change is altering, and in some cases diminishing, life on Earth, biological diversity is central to addressing and adapting to climate change.

Nature can provide more than 30% of the climate solution

"The positive relationship between climate and biodiversity is rarely highlighted. Biodiversity is our best ally yet to mitigate the consequences of climate change."Arnaud Greth, founding president of CEPF grantee Noé

Nature-based solutions can provide more than 30% of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed to hold warming below 2 degrees Celsius between now and 2030, according to a 2017 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Climate.

To avoid extreme negative impacts, temperature increase must be limited to a degree that can only be achieved by protecting existing ecosystems and their diversity of life while also conducting an ambitious ecological restoration program.

"Nature offers remedies to the negative impacts of climate change: it can help living things adapt; prevent future emissions by storing carbon; and offset some of the CO2 concentrations that are already changing our world," said Thomas E. Lovejoy, senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation, George Mason University professor and co-editor of the book "Climate Change and Biodiversity." 

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Yellow and blue graphic lists securing intact ecosystems, avoided deforestation, restoration of natural ecosystems and use of sustainable agriculture as ways to address climate change.
Credit: 
© Conservation International

CEPF’s grantees in the biodiversity hotspots are working now to secure and restore some of the world's most biologically diverse, and threatened, ecosystems. This strategic conservation action offers many benefits to people, including carbon storage, protection of fresh water supplies, buffer against extreme weather such as flooding and drought, sustainable land management and livelihoods.