{"id":4373,"date":"2020-01-17T15:51:12","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T15:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/?p=4373"},"modified":"2020-01-17T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T15:51:12","slug":"governments-must-put-biodiversity-at-the-heart-of-climate-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/2020\/01\/17\/governments-must-put-biodiversity-at-the-heart-of-climate-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Governments must put biodiversity at the heart of climate policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Protecting biodiversity needs to be addressed as critically and rapidly as the climate, argue conservationists from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0comment piece for\u00a0Nature Communications<\/em>,\u00a0Dr Charlie Gardner<\/a>\u00a0(Lecturer in Conservation Science),\u00a0Professor Zoe Davies\u00a0<\/a>(Professor of Biodiversity Conservation) and\u00a0Dr Matthew Struebig<\/a>\u00a0(Reader in Conservation Science) have highlighted that the\u00a0state of the natural environment\u00a0has\u00a0never been of greater concern\u00a0to the public, but attention on\u00a0biodiversity loss is being eclipsed\u00a0by the climate emergency.<\/p>\n

The conservationists explain that the\u00a0environmental crisis actually has two interrelated components:\u00a0climate change and the loss of biodiversity. However,\u00a0public, media and political attention\u00a0has focused primarily on\u00a0global warming. This is despite the\u00a0Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services <\/a>of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services<\/a> (IPBES)<\/a> warning that\u00a0a million species could go extinct in the coming decades.<\/p>\n

Gardner and colleagues write that the\u00a0climate and biodiversity crises cannot be tackled separately\u00a0because intact ecosystems are required to mitigate and adapt to climate change. They argue that it is imperative that our responses to the climate crisis\u00a0avoid the degradation of ecosystems, as this could\u00a0undermine the important contribution\u00a0that natural environments can make to\u00a0climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Using the example of reforestation, they suggest that the\u00a0natural forest regeneration would be more effective for carbon sequestration than establishing new plantations using non-native tree species and will provide greater benefits for biodiversity.<\/p>\n

They conclude that efforts to conserve biodiversity should\u00a0capitalise on the current concern for the climate, which presents\u00a0a big opportunity to mainstream conservation\u00a0and hopefully\u00a0avoid the extinction of a million species.<\/p>\n

Dr Gardner said, “We cannot address the climate crisis without looking after our ecosystems and biodiversity\u00a0so, as the world wakes up to the climate emergency, that\u2019s going to create lots of opportunities for conservation. However, conservationists have to make sure that\u00a0governments put biodiversity at the heart of their climate policies, otherwise what should be a big opportunity could turn into another threat.”<\/p>\n

The comment piece, titled, Conservation must capitalise on climate\u2019s moment<\/a> by Charlie J. Gardner, Matthew J. Struebig and Zoe G. Davies has been published in Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protecting biodiversity needs to be addressed as critically and rapidly as the climate, argue conservationists from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE). In … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40284,"featured_media":4374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159353,6599,124,70,6600],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4375,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373\/revisions\/4375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}